William Morris and the early days of the socialist movement ; being reminiscences of Morris' work as a propagandist, and observations on his character and genius, with some account of the persons and circumstances of the early socialist agitation, together with a series of letters addressed by Morris to the author. With a pref. by May Morris

WILLIAM MORRIS

J. BRUCK GI.ASIKR, at work in his Study, May 14lh, 1920.

From a Snapshot ly Mrs. M'right-RoHnsoKi enlarged
and reproduced by Fredk. Hollyer.

WILLIAM MORRIS

AND THE EARLY DAYS OF THE
SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

BEING REMINISCENCES OF MORRIS' WORK AS
A PROPAGANDIST, AND OBSERVATIONS ON
HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS, WITH SOME
ACCOUNT OF THE PERSONS AND CIRCUM-
STANCES OF THE EARLY SOCIALIST AGITATION

TOGETHER WITH A SERIES
OF LETTERS ADDRESSED BY
MORRIS TO THE AUTHOR

BY

J. BRUCE GLASIER

WITH A PREFACE BY

MAY MORRIS

WITH TWO PORTRAITS

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.G. 4

FOURTH AVENUE & 3ora STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1921

V

h

\

JJ

PREFACE

THE most fitting introduction to the pages that follow
would be Bruce Glasier's own words in an article called
* Why I am a Socialist.' He is describing his early life
when during the summer months he kept his father's
sheep on the braes of Kyle : * Then came the days of
herding, with Burns's poems turned over page by page
among the heather, and the never-ceasing song of the
streams down the glens.' 1

The whole passage — too long to quote — is steeped in
the wonder of wild places ; he who wrote it and possessed
this memory of romance had the poet's heart, the poet's
vision, and when, before mid-life, a treasure of friendship
came to him, it was a gift for which he was spiritually
prepared, prized at its full value. What he gave in return
for the pure joy that the friendship with William Morris
brought into his life can be judged in reading the memories
written here. The man of Scottish and Highland blood
and he of the Welsh kin had much in common ; both
gave unconsciously, with the simplicity of wise children,
and to us who look back and begin to see their lives in
due proportion, the record of such kindliness, such stead-
fastness, as united these two men in their labour for the
common good, is something to rejoice over. For surely
if ever an earthly love was illumined with light from the
Unknown, it was the affection that Bruce Glasier bore
my father. The feeling was neither blind nor uncritical,
nor does it show in the younger man any abnegation of
independence of spirit. In one of the last letters Bruce
wrote to me, he says : * I know I must have tried his

1 Labour Leader, i June 1906.

vi WILLIAM MORRIS

patience sorely many a time, for I was a wee bit wild and
boisterous in those days, and though I loved and indeed
worshipped him as the greatest man then bearing us
company on earth, our Socialist League equalitarian
ideas sometimes led us into foolish affectations of almost
irreverence. But his generous heart forgave us all.'

Glasier had been for some years busied with Socialist
lecturing when my father became acquainted with the
Scottish circle in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the meeting
with this * half-mythical being,' who was pictured by the
ingenuous young men as leading an Arcadian life in the
world of poetry and art down South, was to them an exciting
event. When the hero comes out of the clouds and stands
before his admirers as a man and a good comrade, there is
danger of disappointment, of a sense of disillusion. But in
this case there was no shadow : indeed, the light of reality
shone more warmly and happily, and Glasier writes with
a sort of epic directness of the first meeting with the poet,
and at once gives the keynote of the story he tells us :
' I felt as one enriched with a great possession.'

It is worth while attempting to get the full significance
of such words, uttered by one who had spent his life as
a young man in the grey atmosphere of Scottish manu-
facturing centres, dedicating every possible moment to the
cause he had at heart : it meant the release of pent-up
thoughts, the splendid proclaiming — by a master-voice — of
one's own inarticulate ideals ; it was indeed the blossoming
of the wilderness.

The chapter on Glasgow in the Dawn is, to my mind,
of the greatest interest, approaching the subject from the
standpoint of a man in the centre of the Labour movement,
with outlook and values professedly not those of the student.
We get a series of intimate pictures of the Socialist doings
of those days, as they might impress Bruce's friends who were
either themselves of the working-class, or had cast in their
lot with that of Labour. From first to last, indeed, the
volume has this special weight : it is the story of that

PREFACE vii

particular phase of British Socialism, told in vivid glimpses
by a single-hearted apostle of the cause — himself a poet and
4 dreamer ' — told in plain language to his fellows, the men
with whom he lived and worked and whom he has largely
influenced by his force of character. For me it must always
have a special value for the simple and serious expression of
that unmoved affection which so coloured his life.

But this book does more than tell the story of a
particular phase of Socialism in this country ; it has a wider
and more permanent value. British Socialism is not a
purely materialistic criticism of economic theory ; behind it
there is a basis of ethical criticism and theory. Marxian
economics — apart from Marx's historical survey — is little
read or understood except by his foreign disciples. William
Morris's criticism of modern society and his revolt against
it was fundamentally ethical, and the tremendous import
of his teaching depended upon his experience as poet and
artist. * It must always be remembered that behind and
deeper than all political and economic Socialism there is
somewhere present, giving vitality to the theory, just that
criticism of life, that demand for freedom and beauty, that
craving for fellowship and joy in creative work, that revolt
against sordidness, misery, and ugliness of a cramped existence,
which Morris so gloriously and with such magnificent
humanity expressed. Morris had the heart of Socialism,
and no critic has answered him yet.' x But because his
teaching was not purely economic, his influence on current
Socialistic teaching is likely to be overlooked by historians,
whereas there is not one of the older Socialist leaders who
has not come under his personal influence to a greater or
less extent, and this book gives an experience which was
repeated in some degree all over the country in his many
lecturing tours. Not everywhere was there a follower so
prepared to profit by his opportunities, but nowhere was
the teaching entirely without result.

1 Dr. Mellor, in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,
art. Socialism.

viii WILLIAM MORRIS

Morris's teaching was in truth no new departure ; it
was a continuation of the British Socialist tradition (as
compared with the French, or the Italian or German),
but he carried it to a higher point and set a permanent
mark on it, as these memories help to show.

In what estimation William Morris held his Scottish
friend will be gathered in the letters which are included
at the end of the volume. He stood high in my father's
confidence, and in those stormy days, when sordid quarrels
perforce wasted the time of men who were meant for better
things, Bruce was one to be relied on for his loyalty and
steadiness of purpose — a comfort and solace to that unwilling
leader of turbulent spirits.

In some of the letters, Morris's standpoint between the
Parliamentarian Socialists and the Anarchists is brought
out clearly, and, as he has been claimed by both parties,
it is well to have the story of it now given definitely in his
own words. It is well, too, that those who in future days
may be interested in his life and thought should know that
he saw the drawbacks — faults, weaknesses, what you will —
of both parties, and declined to be committed to theories
and acts he did not accept.

In writing to friends about this proposed volume,
Glasier showed diffidence and hesitation ; ' lest I might
unwittingly in any way deface your Father's image,' he
told me in one letter. ' But,' he added, * it has been borne
in upon my mind that I ought not to allow my recollection of
these wonderful days with your Father to perish with me.'
And so, having taken leave of a busy life that had become
more and more dedicated to lecturing and writing in the
cause of Socialism, he set to work. In the last protracted
illness, in an atmosphere of unclouded serenity, this active
spirit, though rejoicing in the coming freedom, did not allow
itself to waste precious hours in contemplation ; till the
last, Glasier went on writing untiringly. * The Meaning
of Socialism ' was finished before ' William Morris and the
Early Days of the Socialist Movement ' was written, and

PREFACE ix

the last of his literary work, besides articles for the weekly
Labour Leader, was the preparation of a volume of poems
of various dates.

Of the satisfaction of leaving practically completed this
tribute to his friend and teacher I will say nothing. There
are moments in a man's life that one cannot intrude upon,
though Glasier himself has allowed us a glimpse of what
this meant to him.

Something of the beauty of Glasier's character is shown
unconsciously in these pages, his integrity, loyalty, un-
swerving sense of duty, his disinterestedness in labouring
for no material reward, besides the lighter qualities, his
comradeship and good humour, his sense of fun and enjoy-
ment of adventure — all the things that endeared him to my
father. Indeed, the work breathes of the unaffected,
unselfish spirit of the man, and scarcely calls for any such
introducing words. But in writing them, two pictures
linger persistently and unbidden in my mind : first, the
young lad lying on the braes, drinking in the poetry of sky
and earth, welcoming life and its riddle ; then, the man of
middle age, sitting at a desk with bowed head, writing on
the blotted page his lament over the dead hero. The song
of youth and the lament are now alike part of a story, and
in the picture of Glasier that accompanies this volume,
where he lies freed of all questionings and all griefs, some-
thing may be divined of the calm peace and expectancy
with which he waited for the future.

MAY MORRIS

KELMSCOTT,
January 1921.

CONTENTS

PREFACE BY MAY MORRIS . .'
I. INTRODUCTION , '. . .

II. THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE . .

III. FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS

IV. GLASGOW IN THE DAWN

V. His COMRADESHIP : TRAITS AND INCIDENTS .
VI. FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE
VII. A PICNIC ON THE THAMES ....
VIII. A RED-LETTER DAY .
IX. A PROPAGANDA OUTING . . .
X. EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS AND AFTER
XI. As GUEST AND COMPANION ....
XII. CAMPAIGNING DAY AT HAMMERSMITH .

XIII. LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE . . .

XIV. LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS , . .
XV. His SOCIALISM : FELLOWSHIP AND WORK

XVI. CHARACTERISTICS : His PUBLIC SPEAKING
XVII. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION . . •" .
APPENDIX — I. THE ' COMMONWEAL ' .

II. LETTERS FROM MORRIS, WITH INTRO-
DUCTION BY J. B. G. .

FACE

V

I

10

18

25

35
43
57
61

72
84

95
ill

122

131
I42

153

164
177

181

ILLUSTRATIONS

J. BRUCE GLASIER AT WORK IN HIS STUDY,

MAY 14, 1920 Frontispiece

From a Snapshot by Mrs. Wright-Robinson enlarged by
Fredk. Hollyer.

WILLIAM MORRIS . . . / . To face p. i

From a Photograph by Fredk. HoUyer.

WIM.IAM MORRIS

h'roiit a Photograph ly 1-rctik. Hollytr

WILLIAM MORRIS

AND THE EARLY DAYS OF THE
SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Think of the joy we have in praising great men, and how we
turn their stories over and over, and fashion their lives for our
joy ; and this also we ourselves may give to the world. — William
Morris. (Mackail's Life, i. 334.)

WILLIAM MORRIS was to my mind one of the greatest men
of genius this or any other land has ever known. In
abundance of creative energy and fullness of skill in arts
and letters it is doubtful if he has ever been excelled.
Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Albrecht Diirer, and
the builders of the great medieval cathedrals, are among the
few master-craftsmen that rank on an equal plane with him
in respect of the eminence and variety of his gifts. This
appraisement may perhaps appear an exaggerated one to
those who are accustomed to regard painting and sculpture
as the highest, if not the only great, arts ; for Morris
did not devote himself to painting and sculpture, though
as a matter of fact he could, and in his earlier days did,
paint admirably. But to those, and happily they are now
many, who have a better understanding of art, and who
see in the industrial and decorative handicrafts scope for

2 WILLIAM MORRIS

the highest and most delightful exercise of the imagination
and skill of eye and hand, the statement will hardly appear
an extravagant one.

It was, I think, the late Theodore Watts- Dunton who
said of Morris that he had accomplished in his life the
work of at least six men of front-rank literary and artistic
capacity. This is not mere eulogy. No question has
ever been raised in Morris' case as to whether he was
or was not a true poet or a great master of his art. The
genuineness in quality no less than the remarkable range
of his accomplishments is acknowledged by all competent
j udges.

As a poet he ranks in the great modern constellation
with Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats,
Browning, and Tennyson. As a prose writer, especially
of pure romance, he holds a place of his own. He was
the supreme craftsman of his age. In the arts of the
design and manufacture of furniture, wall decoration,
stained glass, book illumination, and book - printing he
created a new tradition. He rescued these arts from the
degradation of mere commercialism, revived the best
observances of old craftsmanship, and pioneered the new.
In various other crafts — arras tapestry, weaving, and
wood-engraving, for example — he attained notable pro-
ficiency. Nor was he, as many men of creative faculty
frequently are, careless and incompetent in regard to the
ordinary affairs, occupations, and amusements of life. He
took a keen interest and displayed an expert hand in many
of the often despised tasks of the household, as well as in
outdoor employments and recreations. He had a good
understanding of all country matters, and was an angler,
oarsman, and swimmer. He was a first-rate cook, and
never was more happy than when, on a house-boat excur-
sion, he was installed in the cooking galley or the kitchen,
amidst pots and pans, cooking meals of his own choice for
his friends. He used to say half-jestingly that he could
bake bread and brew ale with any farmer's wife in Oxford-

INTRODUCTION 3

shire. His knowledge of birds, Mr. Mackail tells us, was
extraordinary ; and he was continually surprising his
friends with an unexpected acquaintance with modern
science and industrial processes which he sometimes affected
to despise. Unlike many of his literary and artistic friends,
he took an eager and indeed an absorbing interest in
politics and all matters relating to the public welfare ; and
he was, as we know, one of the most ardent propagandists
and unflinching agitators of his day.

Morris was not only great as a man of genius and of
general attainments ; he was great in the high manliness
and in the amplitude and richness of his nature. The
impression of strength, of self-sufficiency, of action, of
great individuality in him was felt by everyone in his
presence. Among his immediate friends, many of them
men of remarkable attainments, such as Burne-Jones,
Philip Webb, Rossetti, Swinburne, and De Morgan, he
was acknowledged the most masterful personality of them
all. He occasionally showed a towering temper, but it
was wholly without malice, and seemed given him merely
by way of emblasonry. He was singularly unaffected,
companionable, and good-humoured. There was not a
particle of acidity or bitterness in him. He was simply
incapable of cruelty or any act of meanness or oppression,
of lying or pretence. And while one of the hardest-working,
and in some respects most seriously minded men of his
age, he was also full of jollity and boyishness, delighting in
fun and merry-making, in games and story-telling, and in
outings with friends. Limitations and even positive defects
of character he had — they were conspicuous enough. But
these notwithstanding, he had in him such an unusual
combination of noble and delightful qualities, that he
stands out as one of the grandest and most attractive per-
sonalities of our time.

And forth from his genius and character there sprang
as a great flower his art, wherein was made manifest the
word and teaching which, alike by precept and by the

4 WILLIAM MORRIS

example of his life, he gave to the world. He taught us
as no one ever before the lesson that art was the greatest
expression of joy in work and life, and the highest evidence
(as I will put it) of man's likeness to, and his worship of,
his Creator. In the intensity of this conviction, no less
than in the splendour of his example, concerning the high
importance of art as a fundamental test of man's real
freedom, of democracy, and of civilisation itself, Morris
stands out unique among the greatest teachers of the
modern world.

Lastly, and inevitably, Morris was a Socialist. He was
a Socialist because he could not be William Morris without
being a Socialist. His Socialism was not, as some of his
admirers have supposed, an incidental occurrence in his
life a sort of by-product of his career ; it was integral with
his genius ; it was born and bred in his flesh and bone.
He derived his Socialist impulse from no theory or philo-
sophy or reasoning of his intellect, but from his very being.
Under no circumstances of life could he ever have been
happy in making his fellow-man a slave, or in deriving
advantage from his fellows' pain or misery ; nor could he
have done so at all without being conscious of doing /'/, for
the very nature of him would have perceived the fact
through whatever conventions might obscure it. It was
simply impossible for him to accept from others any service
or gift which he himself was not ready in his heart to give
to others even more abundantly if he could.

Fellowship, he said, is life, and lack of fellowship is
death ; and in saying this he was expressing not a mere
judgment of his mind, but what he felt within himself and
what he expressed in his art and whole conduct of life.

All these things about Morris I did not, of course,
know when I first met him and fixed my youthful homage
upon him : indeed, it was not until after his death that
the greater qualities of his character and achievement
revealed themselves to me. But I felt from my first
acquaintance with him, as did so many others, that he

INTRODUCTION 5

was greater than his fame, or than even his remarkable
personality betokened him to be.

It was something, then, even to know such a man.
It was much not only to know him, but to be privileged
to enjoy his friendship. That I was among those fortunate
enough to gain that boon, I reckon as one of the greatest
rewards of my Socialist apostleship, and as part of the
good fortune of my life. It has not only coloured my
Socialist ideals and hopes, but has tinged with a glow of
romance the memory of all my after days.

True, my acquaintance with him was in actual quantity
of intimacy very small, though it covered a period of over
ten years — from 1884 till the time of his death. Even at
that I only met him some three or four times a year, either
while he was visiting Scotland on a Socialist lecturing tour,
or when I was visiting him at his house in Hammersmith,
and on each occasion only for a day or two. But during
these visits I was brought closely in touch with him, and
was so eagerly interested in all he said and did, and all
things concerning him, that I gained the utmost from
these personal experiences. Besides, he corresponded fre-
quently with me, writing always to me most frankly con-
cerning himself and the affairs of the Socialist movement.

Alike, therefore, because of the interest which is
generally felt in the personal characteristics of a man of
such great attainments as Morris, and because of the
interest and importance which his work in the Socialist
movement has for so many of the younger generation of
Socialists, I propose to set down in these pages some of
my recollections of him.

Often during the past twenty years I have been eagerly
asked about him, when I have been sitting with comrades
round the fire after addressing Socialist meetings, and on
such occasions I have always been implored to write down
my reminiscences of him. That, however, I have hitherto
shrunk from doing, partly because I have felt so much
reverence for the memory of the man that I have been

6 WILLIAM MORRIS

loth to risk writing about him, lest in so doing I should
unwittingly deface in any way the true image of him ; and
partly because I have hitherto been too much absorbed in
my every-day work to afford the leisure for the task —
little as it may seem. But now, confined as I am to bed,
and with only, as it would seem, a few more months at
most in which to write or to do anything more in this
realm of life, I feel a longing which I cannot allay to
leave some of the treasures of my memories of him as a
legacy to the Socialist movement.

And should anyone object to the number of these
chapters, and to the minuteness of the details recorded in
some of them, I can only plead that to myself and, I hope,
to many Socialists at least all that concerns a true appre-
ciation of Morris' character, and the circumstances of his
propaganda career, are as interesting and important as
anything that can be recorded of any notable thinker and
worker in modern history.

It may be asked whether, in recording Morris' conver-
sations, I have relied upon notes taken at the time, or
solely upon my memory. I have done neither. For-
tunately I have preserved diary notes covering several
years of our acquaintance, in which there are brief jottings
concerning him. These have enabled me to check dates
of meetings and some other details. As for my memory,
it is one of the poorest so far as concerns retaining in the
ordinary way a recollection of words or phrases, but it is
usually exceedingly retentive of visual or pictorial impres-
sions. During the past twenty or thirty years I have
often, as I have said, had occasion when talking over early
times with friends to recall many of the incidents recorded
here, and have rarely found any difficulty in bringing back
a vivid recollection of the scenes, but have usually had to
content myself with giving the barest indication of the
conversations. How then am I to account for being
able to set down, as I have done in many instances, what
I give as the actual words used by him ?

INTRODUCTION 7

It is right that I should explain this matter, so that
my readers may judge how far they may place reliance
on my narrative.

I do not know whether my experience in this matter
is at all a common one with writers of reminiscences, but
I have found that my memory is, on many occasions,
subject to what seems to be a sort of * illumination ' or
* inspiration.' Thus, when I have fixed my mind on one,
say, of the incidents recalled in these chapters, the scene
has begun to unfold itself — perhaps slowly at first, but
afterwards rapidly and clearly. Meditating upon it for a
time, I have lifted my pen and begun to write. Then, to
my surprise, the conversations, long buried or hidden some-
where in my memory, have come back to me, sometimes
in the greatest fullness — word for word, as we say. Nay,
not only the bare words, but the tones, the pauses, and
the gestures of the speaker. The whole scene, in fact,
with all that was at the time visible to (or at least noted
by) the eye, and all that was heard or noted by the ear,
has returned and rehearsed or repeated itself in my mind.
Or, to put the experience in another and perhaps as true
a way, my mind has been taken back — winged imagina-
tively across the gulf of years — to the actual occurrence,
and I have seen and heard once more what I then saw
and heard.

In writing, for example, the account given in the
chapter ' A Red- Letter Day,' of our meeting on the
cinder-heap, I was taken back, so to speak, to that Satur-
day afternoon thirty-two years ago, and lived over again
its minutes and hours. I sat again with Morris in the
train ; I listened to the inebriated house-carpenter's chatter;
I turned away shamefaced on the station platform, while
Morris fulminated against the unlucky railway guard. I
stood by the cinder-heap and listened to Morris give his
address, hearing his voice and observing his mannerisms,
watching the faces and hearing the occasional remarks of
the audience, and noting the dreary surroundings of dismal

8 WILLIAM MORRIS

buildings and bristling chimney stalks — I passed again, I
say, through all this experience, the scenes all re-enacting
themselves over again, as vividly (so at least it seemed to
me) as when they occurred.

Not, of course, in every instance has the resurrection
of the incidents or conversations been equally full and
distinct. In some cases I have had difficulty in calling
«p a complete replica of the scenes and in recollecting
the spoken words, and so have given the spirit rather than
the letter of his remarks. But, so far as I am aware, I
have set down nothing in these pages that is not true in
circumstance and substance, if not in every instance in
precise delineation and phrase, of what actually occurred.

In this way, then, have these recollections been written,
and the reader must judge for himself what trust he can
place in the accuracy of the record.

On looking over again what I have written, I discover
that I have brought myself a good deal into my narrative.
My intention was wholly otherwise. Indeed, my first
idea was to write in the third person throughout, and avoid
any reference to myself other than such as cropped up
incidentally. But when I tried to write in that fashion,
the light failed me altogether ; I could see nothing clearly,
and the whole thing seemed destitute of reality and life.
I had no alternative, therefore, but to write as the recollec-
tions flashed into my mind, or not at all. I must bear
cheerfully, therefore, whatever rebuke my egotism — seeming
or real — brings upon me, as ordained by my task.

All that is contained in these pages, as I have said,
has been written lying on a bed of pain, with no expecta-
tion that I shall ever again walk out amongst my fellows.
Rather is my mind set upon the new and strange journey
that is dimly before me. And notwithstanding long years
of agnostic belief I cannot rid myself of the surmise, the
hope, the wonder — call it what you will — that any hour
or day I shall find myself in the * abode where the eternal
are,' and shall again meet my splendid comrade face to

INTRODUCTION 9

face. Nay, strange as the thought may appear, I have
in a sort of half-dream imagined myself going, while yet
some filaments of my present earthly vesture cling to me,
to greet him gladly, and placing this book of mine in his
hand, without any misgiving lest he should find in it aught
that is untrue concerning him, or that might bring a shadow
of frown on his brow, or make me shrink from his eyes.
And if I can say this in all sincerity, as I do, what else
need I say ? What else but repeat his own memorable
words : * Think of the joy we have in praising great men,
and how we turn their stories over and over, and fashion
their lives for our joy ; and this also we ourselves may give
to the world.'

CHAPTER II

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE

IT is necessary to ask my readers who wish to follow
understandingly the story of these chapters to bear with
me while I give a short account of the position of the
modern Socialist movement in this country at the period
when the narrative in these pages begins. Without some
notion of the origin of the Socialist movement and the
circumstances that led to the formation of the Socialist
League, under whose banner William Morris accomplished
the greater part of his work as a Socialist agitator, many
of the references in these chapters would be unintelligible
to the reader, and the true significance of his career as a
Socialist pioneer would escape observation.

I shall confine myself, however, to the barest outline
of events.

There was at the period when Morris began his
Socialist career, early in 1883, only one political Socialist
body in this country — namely, the Democratic Federation.
This body was, in fact, the first political Socialist organisa-
tion formed in this country. Needless to say, Socialism
itself, or rather Socialist ideas and Socialist teaching, did
not originate with the Democratic Federation, or indeed
with any modern movement. The prophecy and power
of Socialism has come down the ages of history with the
growing idealism and social culture of mankind. Only in
recent times, however, has the industrial and political
progress of civilisation rendered the achievement of Socialism

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE n

on a large community or national scale possible by means
of political organisation.

Already by the time of the formation of the Demo-
cratic Federation there was a widespread unrest in
thoughtful minds with the existing conditions of society,
and heralding voices of the coming Socialist movement
were heard in every land. Robert Owen in this country,
and St. Simon and Fourier in France, and Fichte and
Weitling in Germany, had earlier in the century brought
forward their various schemes of co-operative workshops
and communistic associations, and in the revolutionary
outbreaks of 1848 .abroad, and in the Chartist agitation
at home — notably by the voice and pens of Bronterre
O'Brien and Ernest Jones — the cry of 'the Wealth for the
Workers ' in almost clear, class-conscious notes had
resounded throughout the world. But the extraordinary
advance of capitalist industry, aided by steam production
and transport, together with the great exodus to America,
Australia, and other colonies, had distracted the attention
of the people from their misery, and aroused hopes of
more prosperous days. Nevertheless, the gathering cur-
rents of Socialist thought were pressing on and rinding
fitful expression in the writings of Carlyle, Disraeli, Ruskin,
Mill, and the more earnest Radicals, and in the Christian
Socialist movement of Kingsley, Maurice, Ludlow, and
Mackay. Lastly, there came upon the scene about 1880
the outbreaks of the Irish and Highland Land Leagues,
and the * Land for the People ' propaganda of Henry
George, Michael Davitt, Alfred Russel Wallace, and
Philip Wicksteed, which aroused widespread discussion.

But as yet, notwithstanding these signs of social insur-
gency, Socialist ideas had not assumed any definite political
form in this country. The working-class in the bulk
were completely under the sway of the capitalist political
parties — whose most advanced projects were embodied in
Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian speeches of 1879-1880, in
which no reference whatever to Socialism, or even to

12 WILLIAM MORRIS

Labour in a political sense, occurs. There were no
Socialist meetings, no Socialist literature. The Guild of
St. Matthew, founded in 1877 by the Rev. Stewart Headlam,
the Rev. W. E. Moll, and a small group of earnest Church
reformers, who avowed themselves Socialists and declared
that Socialism and Christianity were one, may rightly claim
to have sounded the note of the forthcoming Socialist
movement, but it had a religious rather than a political
basis.

Such was the state, or stage, of Socialist thought in
this country when the Democratic Federation was formed
in London in March 1881. The Federation was not
itself an avowed Socialist body at the outset, though its
chief promoters, H. M. Hyndman, Herbert Burrows, Miss
Helen Taylor (stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill), and
Dr. G. B. Clark, were Socialists. The most advanced
item on its programme was the Nationalisation of the Land ;
and although Mr. Hyndman (who himself had just been
converted to Socialism by reading Marx's * Capital ') at the
opening meeting distributed a little booklet, * England for
All,' which was the first publication in this country that
laid down the new * scientific ' doctrine of Socialism and
called for political action for Socialism, it was not until
nearly four years later, September 1884, that the Federa-
tion adopted a definitely Socialist basis and changed its
name to that of the Social Democratic Federation.

By this time the Fabian Society had also come into
being, emerging, early in 1884, from a group of social
and ethical research enquirers, calling itself the Fellowship
of the New Life. But the Fabian Society, though adopt-
ing political Socialist aims, was a middle-class group of
controversialists, who sought to permeate existing political
parties with Socialist ideas, rather than to create a new
Socialist party.

Morris joined the Federation when as yet it was only
'becoming' a Socialist body, on January 17, 1883, exactly
ten years, it may be noted, before the Socialist movement

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE 13

took its wider political form in the formation of the Inde-
pendent Labour Party. He had, however, for several
years previously taken a great interest in Socialism, and
had both in his art lectures and occasional political addresses
spoken from a definitely Socialistic standpoint.

* I am truly glad,' he wrote to Lady Burne- Jones,
* that I have joined the only society that I could find is
definitely socialistic.'

A few months later he wrote her : * I am sure it is
right, whatever the apparent consequences may be, to
stir up the lower class (damn the word) to demand a
higher standard of life for themselves, not merely for the
sake of themselves and the material comfort it will bring,
but for the good of the whole world and the regeneration
of the conscience of man ; and this stirring up is part of
the necessary education which must in good truth go before
the reconstruction of society. For I repeat that without
laying before the people this reconstruction, our education
will but breed tryants and cowards, big, little and least,
down to the smallest who can screw out money from stand-
ing by to see another man working for him. The one
thing I want you to be clear about is that I cannot help
acting in this matter and associating myself with anybody
who has the root of the matter.' *

The Federation was then a small organisation consist-
ing only of a few dozen affiliated branches or clubs, the
majority of them in London, and each with a score or two
of members. Shortly after joining it Morris was induced,
very reluctantly, to become treasurer of the Party, an
office which, besides compelling him to bother with keep-
ing accounts, a thing he detested, also entailed a constant
drain upon his own purse, as the outlayings always exceeded
the intakings of the treasury.

Small in membership and still young in years as the
Federation was, it had already by the time I am speaking
of become afflicted with the disease of internal dissension.

1 Mackail's Life of Wm. Morris, ii. 112, 113.

i4 WILLIAM MORRIS

This strife reached a climax in December 1884, when
Morris and the majority of the London Executive seceded
from the Federation and formed the Socialist League.

The cause of this split need only be briefly recorded.
It arose, as happens in most such cases, partly from a dis-
pute over political matters and partly from a quarrel of
a personal nature. The chief political ground of con-
tention was the question of parliamentary policy. Contrary
to the views of Morris and his friends, Hyndman, Champion,
Burns, and others on the Executive were resolved to make
palliative measures and electioneering objects of the Party.
In particular they had decided to approve two ' wild cat '
candidatures for London parliamentary seats at the then
impending General Election — that of Jack Williams for
Hampstead and Fielding for Kennington, who polled
the ridiculously small votes of 27 and 32 respectively.
John Burns, whose candidature at Nottingham was well
organised, polled 598 votes out of a total poll of 11,034.

Morris and his side opposed the Hyndman-Champion
policy mainly on two grounds : (i) that parliamentary
action, so long at any rate as the movement was in merely
a propaganda stage, was contrary to Socialist revolutionary
principles, and was besides wholly inopportune while as
yet the people had hardly the least notion of what Socialism
meant ; and (2) because the money for running the Williams
and Fielding candidatures was obtained from the Tory
Party — a fact which Hyndman and Champion not only
admitted but approved.

But to these political considerations, which were the
ostensible grounds of the dispute, there was added a bitter
personal feud between Hyndman and Scheu, both leading
members of the Party. Regarding the circumstances of
this personal squabble I know nothing and have never
desired to know. Mr. Hyndman in his ' Record of an
Adventurous Life' declares that this personal feud, the
blame of which he casts wholly on his opponent, was really
the chief cause of all the trouble. But that I feel sure is

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE 15

quite an erroneous view. The question of parliamentary
policy was then as now one of vital importance in the
Socialist movement, not only in this country but in all
countries ; and it is almost inconceivable that, soon or
late, the conflict of opinion on the subject would not have
divided the movement into two or more camps.

Besides, we can be quite certain that, as far as Morris
at any rate is concerned, he could not have been a party
to any attempt to promote the Socialist cause by means
of political intrigue or irresponsible electioneering adven-
tures. The acceptance of Tory money roused his utmost
indignation. So much did he abhor dodges of that kind
that he never spoke of the matter calmly, and in an article
in the Labour Prophet, January 1894, in which he
expressed the hope that a great political Socialist Party
might be formed, he closed with the warning : * One last
word of caution. Especial care should be taken by Socialists
engaged in politics to avoid even the shadow of a suspicion
of an alliance with declared and ticketed reactionists. No
one will offer us Liberal money ; let it be a deadly affront
to be accused of taking Tory money.'

In one of the last conversations I had with him he
told me that not only had the ' Tory gold ' affair of the
Social Democratic Federation scared him against parlia-
mentarianism, but that the allegation that Keir Hardie
had accepted Tory money at the Mid-Lanark election in
1888 had deeply, and much to his regret, prejudiced him
against Hardie for many years.

The Socialist League was formally inaugurated at
a little gathering held in London on December 30, 1884,
and immediately issued a manifesto setting forth its principles
as a revolutionary Socialist body signed by twenty-three
supporters. Among the names were Morris, Belfort Bax,
E. T. Craig, C. J. Faulkner, Frank Kitz, Joe Lane,
Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx, Frederick Lessner,
W. Bridges Adams, Robert Banner, Tom Maguire (Leeds),
James Mavor (Glasgow), and Andreas Scheu (Edinburgh).

16 WILLIAM MORRIS

Morris was appointed Treasurer and Editor of the new
organ of the League, the Commonweal, with Dr.
Edward Aveling as sub-editor, and J. L. Mahon was
appointed Secretary. Headquarters and printing premises
were opened at 27 Farringdon Street, and the first monthly
issue of the Commonweal, which appeared in February
1885, contained Morris' song, 'The March of the Workers,'
and the manifesto of the League.

The manifesto was mainly devoted to an exposition
of the economic and moral principles of Socialism, or rather
of Communism. No stress was laid upon anti-parliamen-
tary methods. Mere ' State Socialism,' whose * aim would
be to leave the present system of capital and wages still in
operation,' is repudiated, as are also * merely administrative
changes, until the workers are in possession of all political
power.' The Socialist League, it declared, therefore
aimed at ' the realisation of complete revolutionary
Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in
any country without the help of the workers of all civilisation.
For us neither geographical boundaries, political history,
race nor creed makes rivals or enemies ; for us there are
no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends,
whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups
of masters or fleecers whose interests are to stir up rivalries
between the dwellers in distant lands.'

The manifesto indeed was such as any Socialist believ-
ing in parliamentary action directed towards ' complete
revolutionary Socialism ' might sign without reservation.
In fact most of the signatories were avowedly parliamen-
tarians. It was not until the friction between the Federa-
tion and the League had greatly sharpened their differences
on the subject of political policy that Morris and the League
members generally became definitely hostile to parliamen-
tary methods of advancing the Socialist cause. And this
hostility to parliamentary action, as we shall see later on,
only lasted, as far as Morris and most of the original members
of the League are concerned, for a period of a few years.

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE 17

As soon as the Socialist League was formed in London
a number of the provincial branches of the Federation,
wholly or in part, left the Federation and joined. In
Glasgow about one-half of us belonging to the Federation
seceded and formed the Glasgow branch of the League
early in January 1885. The Scottish Land and Labour
League founded in Edinburgh, or the Scottish section of
the Federation, by Andreas Scheu, also seceded from the
Federation, and affiliated itself with the League.

Such in brief was the history and position of the modern
Socialist movement in this country at the period when
these recollections of William Morris begin.

The Socialist League, short-lived as its career was,
was nevertheless an important factor in the making of the
British Socialist movement and in shaping its character.
The influence of its early teaching, its high idealism, its
communistic aim, its conception of fellowship as the basic
principle of Socialism, and its emphasis on, not merely
the political and economic claims of Labour, but the necessity
of art and pleasure in work as a means of joy in life — these
ideas, which were the staple of Morris' teaching, and infused
by the League into the early movement, have remained
germinal in its propaganda, and have helped to give British
Socialism its distinctive character.

CHAPTER III

FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS

LONG before I first met William Morris, or had any notion
of what manner of man he was personally, my imagination
had invested him with a somewhat mysterious glamour,
and he loomed as a star of large but misty splendour on
my mind's horizon. When deep in poetry reading in
my earlier manhood days, his name was familiar to me as
the author of * The Earthly Paradise ' and * Jason,' though
as yet the only work of his that I had read — the only one
I could find in any public library in Glasgow at that time —
was ' Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond.*
I knew also that, besides being a poet of acknowledged high
rank, he was famed in art circles as a designer and reformer
of the decorative arts, but I had seen none of his designs,
and had little idea of what was the nature of his crafts-
manship. In the Athen<zum, the Literary World, and
the architectural journals, I had seen occasional allusions
to his poetry, art-work, and art lectures, and from these
sources I further gathered that he was reckoned a man of
uncommon mould among men of genius ; something of a
prophet or heresiarch as well as a poet and artist. What
the nature of his propagandism was, I did not know. A
vague something, however, about him, or rather about
his repute, gave me the feeling that on fuller knowledge
I should approve and warmly admire him. I surmised
that I.. shp_uld discover in him one^ who, somewhere on the
higher altitudes of literature and art, wasjtriking out towards
new hopes and endeavours for mankind.

18

FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS 19

But in those days, before the advent of free public
libraries and popular art exhibitions, young men, like myself,
of the common people, had scant opportunities of acquaint-
ing themselves with the works of any but the more orthodox
and popular writers and artists of their own day. Contro-
versial writings, such as, for example, those of Ruskin, Mill,
and even Matthew Arnold, were rarely on the catalogues of
libraries accessible to the working-class. Indeed, I hardly
know how so many of us young enquirers got hold of them
at all. For the most part, therefore, we had only dim ideas,
mainly derived from magazine literature, concerning the
new currents of thought that were agitating academic art
and "literary circles.

Morris was thus a sort of half-mythical being to me
when, early in 1 883, paragraphs in the newspapers announced
that the author of * The Earthly Paradise ' was about to
take an active part in the Socialist movement, and had
enrolled himself a member of the Democratic Federation.
The newspapers spoke of the remarkable genius and per-
sonality of the man, regretting that so distinguished a
representative of arts and letters should have become obsessed
by wild and impracticable revolutionary idqas, and ascribing
his conduct to the eccentricity of genius.

The following paragraph, which appeared among a series
of notes which I was contributing at that time to a little
Radical and ' Land for the People ' weekly in Glasgow,
edited by my friend Shaw Maxwell, has a far-away sound
to-day :

* William Morris is a remarkable man. By the publica-
tion of " The Earthly Paradise " he achieved fame as one
of the most original poets of our age. He is the head of
the celebrated firm of decorative artists " Morris & Co,"
and has created a new school for that important branch of
art. Some years ago he startled his aristocratic and wealthy
patrons by betraying unmistakable democratic proclivities.
Up till recently, however, his practical sympathy with the

20 WILLIAM MORRIS

proletariat was confined mainly to occasional and unob-
trusive visits to the London democratic clubs, and con-
tributing to their funds. Now he has begun addressing
public meetings, and it is announced that he has designed
a card of membership for the Democratic Federation, and
has written " A Chant for Socialists." Like Mazzini,
Mr. Morris evidently believes it to be his duty, despite
all other considerations, to "hold aloft his banner and
boldly promulgate his faith."

*THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.'
'Glasgow, October 27, 1883.'

That paragraph summed up all the knowledge I then
had of Morris. I can remember picturing to myself, when
writing it, the wonderful world (as it seemed to me) of
poetry and art in which he and his companions, Rossetti,
Burne-Jones, and Swinburne, lived their Arcadian lives,
and from which, like a prince in a fairy story, he appeared
to be stepping down chivalrously into the dreary region of
working-class agitation.

There was at that period no Socialist group in Glasgow,
and although I had been giving lectures on Socialism during
the past two or three years to Young Men's Debating
Societies, Radical Associations, and Irish Land League
branches, I did not know of anyone who was inclined to
take part in forming a Socialist society. My friend, Shaw
Maxwell, however, then an ardent Land Restorationist
and sympathetic towards the new Socialist ideas, was as
eager as myself to see and hear Morris, and he wrote him,
inviting him to lecture in Glasgow under the auspices of
the Sunday Lectures Society, of which he was the secretary.
Morris to our delight agreed to come ; and about a year
later, Sunday, December 14, 1884, came and gave his
lecture on ' Art and Labour ' in the St. Andrews Hall.
It was in connection with this visit that I first met Morris.

Meanwhile, before the date of Morris' coming, a few
of us had at last got together in Glasgow and had formed

FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS 21

(early in the summer of 1884) a branch of the Social Demo-
cratic Federation. Andreas Scheu, a member of the Council
of the Federation in London, who had recently removed
to Edinburgh in connection with his profession as a furniture
designer, and who had at once founded a branch of the
Federation in that city, visited our Glasgow branch, and
gave us a glowing account of Morris, boldly idolizing him —
alike as the beau-ideal of a poet-artist, and as an archetype
of a Socialist comrade. We were, of course, exceedingly
desirous that Morris should address a meeting under the
auspices of the branch when he came to speak for the Sunday
Lecture Society, but his engagements would not allow his
doing so. He readily, however, agreed to meet the members
of the branch on the Sunday evening after his lecture in the
St. Andrews Hall.

He was booked to speak for the Edinburgh branch of
the Federation on the Saturday evening before coming to
Glasgow, and so eager was I to see and hear him, that instead
of waiting until he came to Glasgow on the Sunday, I made
a special journey to Edinburgh on the Saturday evening.

The Edinburgh meeting was held in a little hall in
Picardy Place, which the branch had recently acquired
as its club-room. The hall had been newly * carved out f
of a first-floor dwelling, and was decorated with fine taste
and furnished with specially designed cane-bottom chairs —
the joint result of Andreas Scheu's artistic skill and the
bounty of an Edinburgh merchant who was friendly to
the cause.1 I remember on seeing the club-room how

1 The donor of the gift of ^100 was a Mr. Millar who had warm
sympathy with Socialism and working-class interests. He also
gave £1000 for the holding of an Industrial Remuneration Con-
ference, to consider the best means of improving working-class
wages. This Conference, which was held in Edinburgh, January
1886, created considerable public interest at the time. Among
those who attended and spoke at the Conference were Alfred Russel
Wallace, A. J. Balfour, Bernard Shaw, John Burns, Professor Leone
Levi, Robert Giffen, Sir Thomas Brassey, Professor Marshall, and
Dr. G. B. Clark. The proceedings were afterwards published in a
special volume.

22 WILLIAM MORRIS

envious I felt at the good fortune of our Edinburgh com-
rades in having such a handsome meeting-place, while we
in Glasgow had to be content with a dingy little hall in
the slummiest quarter of the city for the meetings of our
Socialist group.

Morris had not yet arrived when I took my seat in the
hall, and I recall how anxiously I awaited his appearance
lest for any reason he should not turn up. When a few
minutes later he entered the room with Scheu and the Rev.
Dr. John Glasse (his host and chairman), I at once knew it
was he. No one else could be like that. There he was, a
sun-god, truly, in his ever afterwards familiar dark-blue
serge jacket suit and lighter blue cotton shirt and collar
(without scarf or tie), and with the grandest head I had ever
seen on the shoulders of a man. He was detained near the
door for several minutes, while various people were being
introduced to him, and I noticed that he was slightly under
middle height, but was broadly and sturdily set. A kind
of glow seemed to be about him, such as we see lighting
up the faces in a room when a beautiful child comes in.

When the pressure of friends around him was over,
Scheu, who had noticed me in the hall — I was a complete
stranger to all our Edinburgh comrades save himself —
beckoned me from my seat and introduced me to Morris,
telling him that I was from Glasgow, and was * one of the
most enthusiastic propagandists in Scotland.' At this ex-
travagant commendation Morris cast a scrutinising glance
in my face, and with a friendly word proceeded with Dr.
Glasse to the platform at the end of the room.

I now set my eyes full upon him seated on the plat-
form. He appeared a larger man than when on his feet,
so that Dr. Glasse, who was taller and hardly less stout than
he, appeared small by comparison. He seemed in a remark-
able way to open wide his whole being to the audience.
This impression of his expanding or opening out when facing
his hearers often struck me afterwards as very characteristic
of him. He always sat with his broad shoulders held well

FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS 23

back, his knees spread well apart, and his arms when not
employed spread wide upon his knees or upon the table ;
his loose, unscarfed shirt front, his tousy head, and his
ever restless movements from side to side adding to the
impression of his spaciousness. He was then fifty-one
years of age, and just beginning to look elderly. His
splendid crest of dark curly hair and his finely textured beard
were brindling into grey. His head was lion-like, not
only because of his shaggy mane, but because of the impress
of strength of his whole front. There was in his eyes,
especially when in repose, that penetrating, far-away,
impenetrable gaze that seems to be fixed on something
beyond that at which it is directly looking, so characteristic
of the King of the Forest. This leonine aspect, physiogno-
mists would doubtless say, betokened in Morris the same
consciousness of strength, absence of fear, and capacity for
great instinctive action which gives to the lion that extra-
ordinary dignity of mien which fascinates observers. I noted,
also — but not until afterwards was I aware of the inveteracy
of the habit — the constant restlessness of his hands, and indeed
of his whole body, as if overcharged with energy.

In introducing him, Dr. Glasse spoke of the significance
of the fact that the most gifted artistic genius of our day had
associated himself with a movement that was everywhere
condemned as being but the expression of sordid and un-
cultured discontent. Yet no one could say that William
Morris was uncultured or had any reason in a worldly sense
to be discontented with his lot. It was because of his
extraordinary gift of political and artistic insight that he
realised more keenly than did the men of his class the hopeless
ugliness and injustice of our present social system and was
in revolt against it. William Morris was not only a prophet
of Socialism but was himself a prophecy of Socialism.

The subject of Morris' lecture was * Misery and the
Way Out,' one of his best and most characteristic lectures,
which, however, he but rarely repeated. I was too deeply
interested on this occasion, once he rose to deliver the

24 WILLIAM MORRIS

lecture, in the matter of his discourse, to observe or indeed
be conscious at all of the style of his speaking or mannerism
on the platform, concerning which I may offer some
descriptive notes later on when I come to speak of the
general characteristics of his propaganda work. Enough
to say for the present that I listened to him with more than
delight. His lecture was, as himself, to me a thing of great
joy. I saw no fault whatever in him — I felt as one enriched
with a great possession. In him my ideal of man was
realised. I fell incontinently into a hero-worship which
has, as the reader will now have realised, lasted till this
day, and of which I am neither ashamed nor unashamed

CHAPTER IV

GLASGOW IN THE DAWN

I HAD to leave the Edinburgh meeting immediately after
Morris finished his lecture, as I had to return to Glasgow
that night. Morris came on to Glasgow early on the
Sunday, and was, I think, the guest of Professor John
Nichol, of the Chair of Literature. I did not see him until
the evening meeting in St. Andrews Hall. Despite the
wretched weather, the hall, the largest in Glasgow, seating
nearly 5000 people, had an audience of about 3000 for him.
Perhaps in no other city in the kingdom could audiences
of a higher level of intelligence be obtained than those
which assembled on Sunday evenings in Glasgow at that
period, under the auspices of the Sunday Society, to listen
to lecturers of the variety and stamp of Professor Tyndall,
Alfred Russel Wallace, Ford Madox Brown, W. M.
Rossetti, Bret Harte, Henry George, and Professor John
Stuart Blackie. For while the Sabbatarian ban, then
still stringent in Scotland, against the holding of any but
religious meetings on Sundays kept away the more timid
of the intellectual elite, it ensured, on the other hand, that
the audiences which attended the Sunday Society lectures
were for the greater part composed of men and women
whose minds had been aroused from orthodox sloth and
were prepared to take unconventional paths. Morris himself
remarked on the prevalence of eager, intelligent faces in
the crowded seats near the platform. There were, of
course, among his listeners a considerable number of

25

26 WILLIAM MORRIS

university and art school students, artists, and literary
people, but by far the greater number were artisans of the
thoughtful and better-read type, who in those days formed,
in Glasgow at any rate, a large proportion of the work-
ing class — a larger proportion, I regret to think, than is the
case nowadays.

On his appearing on the platform Morris was scanned
with the keenest interest. His unconventional dress, his
striking head, and his frank, unaffected bearing at once
favourably impressed the audience, which gave him, not
perhaps quite an enthusiastic, but rather, as I thought,
an exceedingly friendly and respectful reception. A pleasant
hum of expectation passed through the hall as he purposefully
laid his manuscript on the reading-stand, and planted the
water-bottle close to his reach, and 'shook his wings out,*
as one might say, before beginning to speak.

He read his lecture, or rather recited it, keeping his
eye on the written pages, which he turned over without
concealment. There being more room to swing about in
than on the Edinburgh platform, he was freer in his move-
ments, and every now and then walked to and fro, bearing
his manuscript, schoolboy-like, in his hand. Occasionally
he paused in his recital, and in a * man to man ' sort of
way explained some special point, or turned to those near
him on the platform for their assent to some particular
statement. Of the lecture itself I only remember that it
seemed to me something more than a lecture, a kind of
parable or prediction, in which art and labour were held
forth, not as mere circumstances or incidents of life, but
as life or the act of living itself. As we listened, our minds
seemed to gain a new sense of sight, or new way of seeing
and understanding why we lived in the world, and how
important to our own selves was the well-being of our
fellows. His ideas seemed to spring from a pure well
of idealism within himself, and in his diction the English
language had a new tune to the ear. No such an address
had ever been heard in Glasgow before ; no such single-

GLASGOW IN THE DAWN 27

minded and noble appeal to man's inherent sense of rightness
and fellowship towards man.

It is not easy for thinkers of the present generation to
understand how strange and wonderful in those days were
the tidings of this discourse, alike to the few of us who were
already on the Socialist path, and to the many who had
hardly, if at all, ever considered the idea of the possibility
of * making the world anew.' Socialist principles generally,
and Morris' own distinctive Socialist views, have now
become more or less familiar to everyone ; but how different
it was in the days when Gladstonian Liberalism represented
the utmost political hopes of civilisation ! But not all the
audience were in ready response. That the sympathies
of the majority were, for the time being at least, fairly
won by the lecture was testified alike by the eager interest
with which they followed every word and by their frequent
bursts of applause during its delivery. There were, how-
ever, a good sprinkling of dissentients, chiefly old Radicals,
men with firmly-set lips and cogitative brows, who, while
unable to withhold their applause from the democratic
sentiments in the lecture, never for a moment lost sight of
their inveterate individualist doctrines. These men shook
their heads doubtfully from time to time as they realised
how far beyond their accustomed political horizon the lecture
would lead them. I remember observing with amusement
when the meeting was over some of these old veterans
lingering in their seats or standing in groups at the doorway
of the hall, eagerly expostulating to one another concerning
the danger or impossibility of the views which had been
laid before them. One old Secularist whom I knew well
remarked to me irritably, but with a wistful look in his
deeply-recessed but wonderfully bright eyes, as he passed
out by the platform door : * Ah, young man, I heard a'
that kind o' thing frae Robert Owen and Henry Hetherington
fifty and more years ago. They were going to bring in
the New Moral World, as they ca'd it, but they found
human nature too hard a flint to flake. Na, na, it hasna'

28 WILLIAM MORRIS

come in my day, and it'll no come in yours ; and it'll no
come at a' if you're going to wreck the Liberal Party as
some o' your friends are trying their best to do.' 1

Yet there were present at the lecture (as there were
at nearly all our Socialist meetings) a few veteran Owen-
ites who had not wholly lost the faith and hopes of their
younger days. These aged Radicals, who were in most
instances Freethinkers, listened enrapt to the unfolding
afresh of the ideas of the Communist Commonwealth,
and were pathetically eager to communicate their joy in
beholding once more in the sunset of their years the glory
of vision which had filled their eyes in the morning glow
on the hill-tops long ago.

This was Morris' first lecture in Glasgow, but it was
not the first pronouncement of Socialism before a large
audience in Glasgow. Two months previously Mr.
Hyndman had publicly inaugurated the new branch of the
Social Democratic Federation by a lecture on Socialism to
a crowded audience of 1200 people in the Albion Hall.
This may be regarded as the first official statement in
Glasgow of modern ' scientific ' Socialism, though Social
Democratic principles had been explained from the platform
of the new branch in small halls for several months pre-
viously. Morris and Hyndman were then the two most
prominent representatives of the Socialist movement in
this country, and their lectures in Glasgow in the back-end
of the year 1884 mark definitely the beginning of public
Socialist propaganda in what has since proved the most
active centre o/ Socialist agitation in the Kingdom.

But what a difference there was between the two
lectures, and between the two lecturers ! Hardly could a
greater contrast be conceived. Indeed, alike in matter
and in spirit, both the lectures and the lecturers might have

1 This was an allusion to the Land Restoration League candida-
tures of Shaw Maxwell and William Forsyth, who contested Parlia-
mentary seats in Glasgow at the General Election, 1884, in opposition
to the official Liberal nominees.

GLASGOW IN THE DAWN 29

seemed to belong to different worlds or civilisations.
Hyndman, striking in appearance, with his long, flowing,
senatorial beard, his keen, restless, searching eyes, and full,
intellectual brow, dressed in the city best, frock-coat suit
of the day, with full display of white linen — his whole
manner alert, pushful, and, shall I say, domineering — looked
the very embodiment of middle-class respectability and
capitalist ideology ; a man of the world, a Pall Mall poli-
tician from top to toe.

I cannot remember the arguments of his lecture ; I
can only recall the impression made by it on my mind at
the time. Brilliant and convincing it undoubtedly was —
dealing almost wholly with the economic and political
malefactions of the capitalist system, and I enjoyed it
greatly. Racy, argumentative, declamatory, and bristling
with topical allusions and scathing raillery, it was a hustings
masterpiece. But it was almost wholly critical and de-
structive. The affirmative and regenerative aims of
Socialism hardly emerged in it. The reverberating note, in
feeling if not in phrase, was * I accuse, I expose, I denounce.'
He seemed to look round the civilised world and see there
nothing but fraud, hypocrisy, oppression, and infamy on
the part of the politicians and money-mongers on the one
hand, and on the other only wooden-headed ignorance,
stupidity, and servility on the part of the working class.

Mankind appeared in his view compounded of oppressors
and oppressed, fleecers and fleeced, dupers and duped.
He was jauntily cynical, or affected to be so. ' I am an
educated middle-class man. I derive my living from the
robbery of the workers. I enjoy the spoil, because it is
in itself good, and the workers are content, and apparently
desirous that I should enjoy it. Why therefore should I
object to their slaving for my enjoyment if they themselves
don't ? ' Yet nevertheless there was in his protagonism
a fiery and even fanatical zeal. He appealed for better
things — for justice and democracy — for a new system of
politics and economics, though he hardly indicated whence

3o WILLIAM MORRIS

would come the motive or the power to effect the change,
except in the material factors of civilisation — the inevitable
next stage of social evolution.

I heard Hyndman's lecture, as I have said, with real
enjoyment. It confounded and exasperated his fellow-
respectables in the audience, and it stung and roused the
working class. His argument against Capitalism was in-
contestable. In the field of economics his victory over the
opponents of Socialism was, or seemed to be, complete.
But the lecture, though it excited, did not inspire. One
gained no increase of faith in man's humanity to man from
it. There was hardly a ray of idealism in it. Capitalism
was shown to be wasteful and wicked, but Socialism was
not made to appear more practicable or desirable. There
was, in fact, very little Socialism in the lecture at all — it
was an anti-capitalist ejaculation.

When I contrasted Morris' lecture with Hyndman's,
and compared the two men themselves — their impress on
their hearers, their personal qualities — I felt then, as
I have felt ever since, that the two lectures were different
kinds of Socialism, even as the two men were at heart
different types of Socialists. And I then felt, and still feel,
that I liked the one Socialism and not the other. And
I felt, and now feel more than ever, that the one Socialism
is true, universally and for ever, while the other Socialism
is at least only half-Socialism, and makes only temporary
and conditional appeal, and that not to the higher social
but to the more groundling and selfish instincts of the
race.

This feeling that Morris and Hyndman represented
two widely different conceptions of Socialism was impressed
upon me in a curious way by an experience that befell
Morris himself on the night of his first Glasgow lecture
which I have already described. It had been arranged,
as mentioned in the previous chapter, that after his lecture
Morris should come along to the meeting-place of our
Glasgow branch of the Federation for a short chat with

GLASGOW IN THE DAWN 31

the members. As soon, therefore, as he had gone through
the civility of greeting a number of literary and ' art ' folk
who had gathered in the reception-room, he came away
with Mavor and myself across the city to Watson Street,
off the Gallowgate, where upstairs in a low-ceilinged
warehouse flat the branch meetings were held. He arrived
just as the public meeting was over, and found a dozen or
so members grouped round the platform awaiting Morris*
coming, W. J. Nairne, the secretary, acting as chairman.

The trouble inside the London Executive of the Fede-
ration, of which I have spoken in a previous chapter,
had already divided the Glasgow branch into two factions.
Nairne was unschooled, but an exceedingly zealous propa-
gandist, who with myself had been chiefly instrumental
in forming the branch, and was a keen partisan on the
Hyndman side, so much so that he greeted Morris quite
frigidly on his arrival, only grudgingly offering him his
hand. The members generally, however, gave Morris a
hearty cheer. Nairne said that he supposed Comrade
Morris would like to say a few words to the members,
and with this rather discouraging invitation Morris briefly
addressed the meeting.

He was glad, he said, to have the opportunity of meeting
for the first time his comrades in Glasgow — the few who
had banded themselves together to begin the tremendous
task of bringing into being a Socialist Commonwealth in
Great Britain, and he congratulated them on the signs he
had observed in Glasgow and Edinburgh of public interest
in the subject of Socialism. He then alluded in careful
words to the friction in the London Executive on the question
of political policy, and expressed the hope that the dispute
would be got over and that they would all be able to work
together in unity inside the Federation ; but even should
the regrettable happening come that the two sides resolved to
separate, he hoped both would continue friendly towards one
another, making common cause for the overthrow of the
capitalist system.

32 WILLIAM MORRIS

Immediately Morris concluded his remarks Nairne
proceeded to heckle him, much as he might have done an
avowed opponent of Socialism. Though surprised at the
hostile attitude of Nairne and the catechistic nature of
his questions, Morris showed no resentment, but answered
the questions quite good-naturedly, and it was evident
that the meeting felt drawn towards him, though the greater
number of those present were, as I knew, ranged with
Nairne on the Hyndman side.

On his rising to go, Nairne, as a sort of parting shot,
put to him the question : * Does Comrade Morris accept
Marx's theory of value ? ' Morris' reply was emphatic,
and has passed into the movement as one of the best remem-
bered of his sayings : ' I am asked if I believe in Marx's
theory of value. To speak quite frankly, I do not know
what Marx's theory of value is, and I'm damned if I want
to know.' Then he added : * Truth to say, my friends,
I have tried to understand Marx's theory, but political
economy is not in my line, and much of it appears to me
to be dreary rubbish. But I am, I hope, a Socialist none
the less. It is enough political economy for me to know
that the idle class is rich and the working class is poor, and
that the rich are rich because they rob the poor. That I
know because I see it with my eyes. I need read no books
to convince me of it. And it does not matter a rap, it
seems to me, whether the robbery is accomplished by what
is termed surplus value, or by means of serfage or open
brigandage. The whole system is monstrous and intoler-
able, and what we Socialists have got to do is to work
together for its complete overthrow, and for the establish-
ment in its stead of a system of co-operation where there
shall be no masters or slaves, but where everyone will live
and work jollily together as neighbours and comrades for
the equal good of all. That, in a nutshell, is my political
economy and my social democracy.'

Bidding the group good-bye with an encouraging word
about the stir the Free Speech agitation was creating in

GLASGOW IN THE DAWN 33

London, Morris left the meeting, in company with Mavor,
and next morning returned to London. Though he could
not fail to observe Nairne's inquisitorial behaviour, he was
not in the least offended at it, and remarked good-humouredly
going downstairs : * Our friend Nairne was putting me
through the catechism a bit, after your Scottish Kirk-Session
fashion, don't you think ? He is, I fancy, one of those
comrades who are suspicious of us poetry chaps, and I don't
blame him. He is in dead earnest, and will keep things
going, I should say.'

And Morris was right. Nairne was in dead earnest,
and kept the Federation going in Glasgow, often almost
single-handed, till his death twenty years later. By occupa-
tion he was a day-labourer (a stone breaker), with a wife
and five children to support, and though industrious and
a teetotaler his life was a hard and colourless one, and
poetry and art were trivialities to him. He was class-
conscious to the last degree. Somewhat sombre in mood,
and narrow and intolerant in his political creed, he was
nevertheless of a kindly disposition, a good husband and
father, and a staunch co-operator and trade unionist. Morris
afterwards used to ask in a friendly way about him. He,
more than any other, was the founder and pioneer of the
Social Democratic Federation in Scotland.

It was, as I have said, a curious circumstance that
Morris, as a sequel to his meeting earlier in the evening,
when his lecture envisaging the glowing hopes of Socialism
had seemed to captivate the minds of a vast gathering of
the unregenerate public, should have experienced this sudden
transition into a small disillusionising assembly of ' elect
brethren,' muffled in the spiritual pride and exclusiveness
of the old-world sects. No less curious was it that in the
person of his Socialist comrade, Nairne, the nemesis of
labour without art, and life without joy, of which he had
been speaking, should have been so strikingly personified.

Yet the mystery of the Word abides. How much of
the seed sown among the 3000 hearers in the St. Andrews

34 WILLIAM MORRIS

Hall took root, and afterwards bore fruit, none can tell.
But to the eye that great audience melted away into nothing-
ness, leaving no visible trace, whereas the little group of
Socialists remained in being and endured, diffusing forth
such light of Socialism as it had, even if it were only as the
glow-worm's little ray in the dark.

CHAPTER V

HIS COMRADESHIP : TRAITS AND INCIDENTS

^ — •

\ MR. MACKAIL and other writers speak of Morris' dislike
\ to going into society or taking part in the usual amenities
<_of social intercourse. He lived, even as he worked, in
his own way, heeding very little the conventionalities of
his class or profession. This peculiarity has been noted
as being a rather singular characteristic in one who laid so
much emphasis on neighbourliness and mutual aid, and
who enunciated the axiom that ' Fellowship is life and lack
of fellowship is death,' and there are those who discover
in his behaviour indications of an unsocial trait in his nature,
a disposition of aloofness towards his fellows.

Therein, I think, Morris is misunderstood. I cannot,
of course, speak of him from such familiar acquaintance as
many of his older and more intimate friends enjoyed, but
so far as my own knowledge of him during the last ten years
of his life goes, I should say that instead of being in any
degree of an unsocial or seclusive disposition, he was pre-
eminently companionable by nature. I find also that in
the biographies of Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Swinburne, and
other of his more celebrated associates, he invariably figures
as a delightful, even if sometimes a somewhat unmanageable,
companion — always he is the leading spirit in the conversa-
tion and fun of their gatherings. True he displayed intense
self-willedness so far as concerned his own ways of life and
his work, and demanded a good deal of home seclusion when
preoccupied with his writing and his art schemes. His

35

36 WILLIAM MORRIS

dislike, too, of many of the ways of modern life, and especially
his impatience with the mere banalities of conversation and
trivialities of politeness that make up so much of the routine
of conventional society, caused him to shun many of the
customary modes of social intercourse. But it was the
ardour and strength of his social feelings, rather than any
lacking or weakness of amiability in him that caused him
to detest these conventions.

In the working class there is, generally speaking, much
greater freedom of social intercourse, or, at any rate, much
less routine and rigidity in the customs of friendship and
civility, than among the middle and upper classes. Men
and women of the working class may more freely choose
their companions and company, and are commonly more
sincere, if sometimes more ungainly, in their modes of
coming and going amongst their friends. It is noteworthy,
therefore, that whatever aloofness or exclusiveness, what-
ever of that element of aristocratic reserve of which Mr
Mackail speaks, Morris may have shown in his earlier or
later years amongst his own class, he betrayed not the least
disposition of that kind in his later years when amongst
his Socialist comrades of the working class. In these
associations he exhibited no trace of inurbanity, except
perhaps a certain shade of shyness at times. On the con-
trary, he was always esteemed one of the most friendly and
jolly of comrades.

It would be an easy and a delightful task for me to
multiply these pages with incidents bringing into view the
companionableness and unfailing sense of equality displayed
by Morris when campaigning with his Socialist comrades,
whether when amongst those, as at Hammersmith, with
whom he was personally acquaint, or amongst those up and
down the country who were for the most part strangers to
him. So generally known in the movement was his socia-
bility in this respect that there were few occasions of .his
visiting branches on his lecturing tours but some sort of a
special gathering or outing was arranged in order that the

HIS COMRADESHIP 37

rank and file of the members might share the enjoyment of
his company.

To Morris, who, quite apart from the aversion which his
Socialist principles gave him toall assertions of class inferiority,
was ever impatient of mere formalities and gentilities, and
who had an intense dislike of * lionising ' or being ' on show,'
it required as a rule no little self-restraint to endure any sort
of display of personal homage, even when without any taint
of snobbery. The fact, therefore, that he submitted him-
self so willingly as he did on those occasions to the fraternal
exploitation of his fame is striking testimony to the basic
good-heartedness of his nature.

One of the many testing experiences of this kind which
I recall occurred in connection with his visit to Glasgow,
when he spoke there for the first time under the auspices
of the newly formed branch of the League. On the Saturday
preceding the Sunday lecture he was taken on a steamboat
excursion to Lochgoilhead, in order that he might enjoy
a glimpse of the scenery of the Clyde, and that at the same
time members and friends of the branch might have an
opportunity of making the acquaintance of their distin-
guished comrade. A function of this kind in which the
guest is obliged to submit himself to the process of being
casually introduced to a multitude of strangers, to whom he
is expected to make himself agreeable and interesting, is a
trying enough ordeal even to public men who are accustomed
to, and take a pleasure in, public receptions, but to a man of
Morris' temperament it is usually a positive torture. Yet
Morris bore the ordeal, an all-day-long one, magnificently.
So full of pleasure was he in the thought of serving the move-
ment in any capacity at all, that I doubt if he felt the task
of the day's civilities half so irksome as would many a man
of a more insensitive but much less enthusiastic nature.
Only when he was pressed rather witlessly by some of the
younger quidnuncs to give his opinion on much disputed
questions of art or literature — subjects particularly dis-
tasteful to him in casual conversation — did he display signs

38 WILLIAM MORRIS

of impatience. Happily, however, the majority of the
party were content to let Mavor, Craibe Angus, and one
or two other wiser heads act as the chief spokesmen of the
company, with the result that we had from Morris many
delightful discussions, brimful of history, folklore, and stories,
old and new — so that a workman comrade remarked after-
wards that the trip had been to him * as good as a university
education.'

Nor were there lacking some rather droll incidents,
one of which particularly amused Morris, who chuckled
over it many a time in after days. Attention had been called
to the fact that a number of places which the steamboat
passed on its way, such as Ardmore, Ardentinnie, Ardgoil,
bore evidence from their names of the Norsemen's settle-
ment in Scotland. This led Morris to relate one or two
of the old Norse legends, whereupon one of our comrades,
a professional man, who had been talking freely to Morris
about literature, and had conveyed, perhaps unwittingly, the
impression to all of us that he was familiar with Morris*
works, stumbled on the remark, ' Have you never thought,
Mr. Morris, of translating into English verse some of these
old Norse tales ? I feel sure they would take on with the
general reader much better than Classic themes which have
been rather overdone, don't you think, by our poets ? '

The maladroitness of such a remark, addressed to one
of the chief, if not the greatest modern versifier of both
Norse and Classic themes, was perceived by most, if not all,
the other listeners, and uncomfortable looks went round.
Morris, however, beamed with enjoyment of the situation,
4 But I assure our friend,' he replied, with sly emphasis,
* that I have thought about it, and have even tried my hand
at the job. The result, however, has hardly " taken on "
quite as well with the general reader as our friend supposes
it would. He is probably right about the Classic business
being overdone, and I confess myself one of the overdoers.'
The conversation was mercifully switched on to a different
topic.

HIS COMRADESHIP 39

Another member of the party, a city councillor, who
was an ardent Henry Georgite, fancied he was making
himself both entertaining and instructive to our guest, by
immediately citing from a notebook, which was never out
of his hand, the rent value of the land in the neighbourhood
of any part of the landscape on which Morris' eye happened
for a moment to rest.

Another friend, an enthusiastic vegetarian, was eager
to ascertain what the dietetic habits were of Rossetti, Burne-
Jones, Swinburne, and other men of genius with whom
Morris was acquaint, and assured Morris that he would find
his intellect much clearer, and feel fit for twice as much work,
if he gave up flesh-eating and stimulants !

There were, of course, several young aspirants to literary
and art fame who took occasion to waylay Morris when he
was by himself, and submit to him examples of their verses
or specimens of their designs — all unconscious, let us hope,
of the squirming of their victim !

Morris, I repeatj bore himself splendidly through all
this prolonged heckling and harassment, and his forbearance
never once gave way. Is there, I wonder, any other poet
or artist of repute who would have endured a similar experi-
ence with so much patience and good-humour ? I cannot
think of anyone. Shelley would have fled the steamboat
at the first port of call ; Wordsworth would have ensconced
himself on a campstool and gone to sleep ; Tennyson would
have hidden himself away somewhere — if need be, in the
coal-hole.

The Lochgoilhead excursion was, however, an excep-
tional experience. Generally, Morris' experiences of the
fraternal receptions arranged on the occasion of his visits
to branches were of a less exacting kind. Even in Glasgow,
where we were always apt to exploit the fame and zeal of
our elect brethren to the utmost, we did better on after
occasions. I remember how wholly delightful was the
tea-party meeting we held in his honour on his next visit
the following season. A more enjoyable and appropriate

40 WILLIAM MORRIS

little celebration could hardly be wished. We had no lack
of good singers amongst us, and we offered our guest a feast
of Scottish song which he acknowledged was a real treat to
him. He himself read the speech of John Ball at the market-
place from his own ' Dream of John Ball,' which was then
appearing in weekly instalments in the Commonweal. He
read, or rather chanted, that wonderful apologue in a rich,
solemn strain, as one whose own heart and soul were in
every word, and such was the effect of the recital that we all
felt as though it were John Ball himself who was speaking
to us and we were the yeomen assembled round him and
were being consecrated with him to the Cause ' even unto
life or death.' None of those present that evening would
ever forget how strangely and deeply we were moved by that
reading.

Our gathering, though only consisting of a few dozen
members and friends of the branch, was noteworthily
international in voice as in sentiment. Leo Melliet, a
French refugee well known in scholastic circles, who had
been Mayor and Minister of Justice in the Paris Commune,
and was one of our earliest supporters in Glasgow, sang the
' Carmagnole ' with such dramatic effect that we were
roused to our feet and danced the chorus with him round
the room. A German comrade, one of a small group of
German glass-blowers who were members of the branch,
sang a German workers' song, and a Russian Jew, a cigar-
maker, sang a Yiddish revolutionary song which to our
ears sounded as a weird sort of dirge. Between the songs
we had several short speeches, including one from Morris,
all pitched on an elated note, rejoicing in the hopes of the
new civilisation which we were, we believed, bringing into
birth.

Questions were put to Morris from all parts of the room
which drew from him many characteristic sayings and
stories. Towards the end of the evening Mrs. Neilson, a
member of the Ruskin Society and our first woman recruit,
surprised us with a little preceptorial address, in which she

HIS COMRADESHIP 41

gently rebuked us for the warlike tone of some of our
Socialist utterances, and pressed upon us her view that only
by the extension of the franchise to women could Socialism
ever be obtained, as men were far too stupid and selfish
ever to do away with a system that satisfied their fighting
and predatory instincts.

This was, I believe, almost the first definitely anti-
militarist note, and the first sound of the new women's
agitation that any of us had yet heard. She amused us
greatly by admonishing Morris quaintly against becoming
conceited because of his genius and the hero-worship of his
Socialist comrades ! Morris in reply playfully assured her
that were she acquaint with his experiences for but one
week as editor of the Commonweal, or as a member of the
Council of the League with Joe Lane and Frank Kitz as
colleagues and monitors, she would have no anxiety lest
his personal vanity should become unduly inflated. I
cannot recollect whether he alluded to her remarks about
the militarist spirit and women's enfranchisement — a tell-
tale forgetfulness on my part. But I doubt if any of us
realised the prophetic importance of the precepts thus
pitched upon us by the first woman's utterance in our
midst.

Thus the evening sped with us till midnight, when we
sang * Come, comrades, come,' acclaimed the ' Social
Revolution,' and dispersed on our various ways home.
One group of us insisted on convoying our guest to the
hotel door, chorusing along the streets his own * March
of the Workers,' and feeling almost persuaded that we were
destined to forgather some not fkr distant day at the
barricades !

Traditions of similar fellowship gatherings with Morris
exist in many other towns where branches of the League
were founded. In every instance his personal association
with the members appears to have given a richer colouring
to their idealism and bestowed an imperishable fragrance
on the sentiment of comradeship in the Socialist cause.

42 WILLIAM MORRIS

A halo of enthusiasm glows round his memory among
the little groups of Socialist League members who still
survive, such as rarely clings to the memory of any public
man. I cannot think of any modern movement which
inherits a more inspiring tradition of apostleship in this
respect.

I have to go back to the lives (remote as they be in
category as in time) of George Fox and William Tyndale,
and to the legends of the great Celtic teachers, St. Columba,
St. Cuthbert, St. Aidan (of Lindisfarne), and the Venerable
Bede to find a like instance of a teacher or leader enshrining
himself so perfectly in the affections and imagination of his
friends and disciples. Indeed, I have often when recalling
my own memories of Morris' visits, such as those described
in the chapters * A Red-Letter Day ' and ' A Propaganda
Outing,' and when listening to the recollections of some of
our older comrades in Hammersmith, Norwich, Bristol,
Leicester, Manchester, Edinburgh, and other towns, found
the words in the story of the walk to Emmaus repeat
themselves in my mind : * Did not our heart burn within
us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he
opened to us the scriptures ? '

CHAPTER VI

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE

FROM the outset to the end of its career the Socialist League
was harassed with internal trouble. The members of the
League had, as my readers will remember, split away from
the Social Democratic Federation, chiefly on the ground
that as revolutionary Socialists they could take no part in
parliamentary agitation — at any rate not until Socialism
had so far ripened in the country that Parliament could
be made the means of precipitating the social revolution.
Nevertheless, almost as soon as the League was formed a
considerable section of its members in London began a
campaign inside its ranks to get parliamentary action in-
cluded among its avowed means of agitation. And again,
no sooner was this body of disturbers finally compelled to
withdraw from the League after a few years of incessant
strife than an Anarchist faction began to afflict the League
in a kindred way by stirring up dissension in order to get
the League to declare itself an Anarchist organisation.

These troubles, particularly as the dissentients pursued
their agitation with acerbity and recourse to intrigue and
personal accusation, worried and vexed Morris. So much
so, indeed, that eventually the irritation of it all greatly
lessened his pleasure in working inside the League, and
so led to the breaking up of the League altogether.

It was in the Whitsuntide of 1888, when the parlia-
mentarian faction had attained a sufficient following in
London to give their efforts to capture the League some

43

44 WILLIAM MORRIS

promise of success, that I went to London in order to attend
the Annual Conference of the League, and visited Morris
at his house in Hammersmith.

Several weeks before the Conference, Morris had become
so much alarmed lest the dissentients should carry the day
that he wrote me urging me to get the Glasgow branch
to send me or some other delegate to the Conference to
withstand the assault.

How paltry now seem the circumstances that caused
Morris so much perturbation ! How lamentable, one is
inclined to exclaim, that the powers of one of the most
richly gifted minds of modern days should have been tor-
mented with such trivial and wholly distasteful wranglings !
Yet too much has perhaps been made of that aspect of the
matter. I am not at all convinced that Morris was really
harmed by the experience. I think in some ways the
intimate acquaintance which it gave him with the difficulties
of political organisation and the recalcitrancy of some of
his fellow-men, together with the sense of the helplessness
of all his powers to meet the situation, produced a certain
shade of work-a-day humility and patience in him that
mellowed and enriched his character.

This is, I think, acknowledged by Mr. Mackail in his
* Life of Morris,' and while it is true that in the end these
experiences contributed to his retirement from the active
ranks of the movement, they were assuredly not the sole
cause of his so doing. Besides, I am persuaded that in the
six or eight years of his active apostleship he gave the best
that was in him to give for the immediate propaganda of
Socialism ; and that had he continued to work in the move-
ment as he had been doing he would have effected very
little result, and might have suffered the loss of that high
idealism which, happily as it was, he preserved to the end.

Nor let us forget that his experience of the faction
wranglings in the movement (which are by no means so
merely fractious or so sterilizing as they often appear to be)
was one which has been ordained for all pioneers and re-

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 45

formers. Think of St. Paul's heart-breaking worries with
the Churches which were the ' children of his own loins.'

To come, however, to my visit to Morris at Hammer-
smith.

I arrived in London on the Saturday afternoon. Morris
had suggested to me that as he would not be at home till
about six o'clock in the evening, I might, should I arrive
earlier in the day, look in and have a glance at the Art
Exhibition in the New Gallery. This I did, and as we
shall afterwards see, it led me into an extraordinary
experience.

On my arrival at Kelmscott House, Morris immediately
came from his study on the ground floor, and after welcoming
me cordially, took me up to my bedroom on one of the
upper floors, and, leaving me there for a few moments,
returned to introduce me to the * inhabitants.' * Here is
our Scotchman, but he hasn't come in kilts nor brought
bagpipes with him,' said he to Mrs. Morris, who was
seated on the famous settle which stood out from the fire-
place, doing some embroidery work. She rose and greeted
me. I had, of course, heard of her great beauty, and had
seen her portrait in some of the reproductions of Rossetti's
pictures, but I confess I felt rather awed as she stood up
tall before me, draped in one simple white gown which fell
from her shoulders down to her feet. She looked a veritable
Astarte — a being, as I thought, who did not quite belong
to our common mortal mould. After greeting me she
resumed her embroidery and listened with amusement to
Morris' playful chaff.

'It's lucky for us/ continued Morris, 'that Glasier
is not a stickler for the ancient customs of his country ;
for in my young days we were told that Scotchmen ate
nothing but porridge, drank nothing but whisky, and sang
one another to sleep with the Psalms of David.'

He pursued this playful vein for a little, giving Mrs.
Morris an exaggerated account of some of his experiences
in Scotland of the ' wild ways of the Picts.' Mrs. Morris

46 WILLIAM MORRIS

glanced at me occasionally, as if to assure me that she was not
being taken in by his stories. * He is quite naughty some-
times,' was her only remark. He then snowed us an old book
he had just bought, containing a diary, cooking receipts,
and domestic accounts of some Squire's lady of the sixteenth
century, and read with amusing comments some of the
items.

While listening to him I was scanning with great
interest the furnishings of the room. I had observed on
entering its large size, its five windows looking over the
Thames, and the simplicity and beauty of its furnishings.
I experienced, as every visitor I am sure must have done,
a delightful sense of garden-like freshness and bloom in
the room. Noticing my interest in the things about me,
Morris briefly described some of them. The handsome
canopied settle on which Mrs. Morris was sitting was,
he said, one of the earliest productions of the firm of Morris
& Company, and the highly decorated wardrobe at the
end of the room with painted figures was painted by Burne-
Jones, and was his wedding gift to Morris.

Jenny, the eldest daughter, now came in, and we were
served with a cup of tea, after which Morris took me down-
stairs to the library to have a smoke and talk about League
business before supper.

Well do I remember the joy I felt as I sat down with
him in that incomparable room. Destitute of furniture,
except the big plain table and a few chairs, the floor of
bare boards without any carpet, and bookshelves all round
the room laden with all manner of books, new and old,
and great antique tomes on the lower row, the place
seemed to me a perfect realisation of a poet's and crafts-
man's den. The table itself was a joy for ever : a bare,
white polished board, upon which were spread in fine
disarray books, manuscripts, designs, a large ink-bowl
with quill pens, tobacco pipes many, a tobacco jar filled
with his favourite Latakia, drawing instruments, engraved
blocks, and other delightful things. It was the sheer

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 47

antithesis of a housemaid's pride. Morris invited me to
help myself to a pipe and tobacco, doing so himself by way
of example. The pipes were of various kinds, cherry-
wood, briar, and clay j he himself preferred the briar.

So here I was with William Morris in the room where
he had written so many of his famous poems, and worked
out so many of his famous designs. How happy I was !
I felt an enchantment in the place. Morris talked of
the morrow's Conference, informing me of the most
recent tactics of the dissentients to carry their parliamentary
resolution. He spoke without anger, but with a sense of
depression.

* For the life of me,' he said, * I can't see what possible
object they can have in all this business of theirs. If
they succeed (as of course they won't, this time at any
rate, for we are assured of a majority), then I and our side
will leave the League : and what then ? We have all
the speakers that count, we have the Commonweal, and I
have the money — more's the pity, maybe. They will
have a few penniless branches, and no object or policy to
justify their existence separate from the S.D.F. It is a
sheer faction racket — just such as school-boys indulge
in when they split into factions in order to fight each
other for no rhyme or reason, save the love of the squabble ;
all of which is perhaps natural enough as a means of
self-development on the part of school-boys, as doubtless
Herbert Spencer has taken the pains somewhere in his
books to explain ; but it is rather disconcerting to find
foolishness of this kind among grown-up and otherwise
intelligent men, masquerading as service for the Socialist
cause.'

He turned then to interest me in some of his books,
and explained to me the history of the Diirer wood-
engravings and other prints on the walls.

May Morris now arrived. I was greatly interested
to meet her ; I had heard so much about her beauty
and her activities in the movement. She resembled her

48 WILLIAM MORRIS

mother, I thought, more than her father in face, and was
strikingly handsome. Her manner was quiet, and she
was, I observed, inclined rather to ask questions or listen
than to offer opinions of her own. She worked at a piece
of embroidery as she sat with us.

Then came one or two friends, including Emery
Walker, the well-known engraver, an intimate friend
and secretary of the Hammersmith Branch of the League,
Philip Webb, the architect, and Tarleton, a leading member
of the branch, and we went into the dining-room for
supper.

The dining-room — (the ceiling two floors high) lit
up with large candles on brass or copper candlesticks
(Morris used candles only in the house — he detested gas-
light)— was magnificently grand in its glow of colour
derived from the Morris Acanthus wall-paper, and a great
gorgeous Persian carpet hung up like a canopy on one
side of the room. Opposite, over the fireplace, was
Rossetti's noble portrait of Mrs. Morris, and on one side
of the large window crayon drawings by Rossetti of Jenny
and May Morris. There were one or two other Rossetti
crayon drawings on the wall. These, I think, were the
only pictures in the room, and indeed there were few
pictures on the walls, so far as I observed, anywhere in the
house, other than the Durer and a few other engravings
and sketches in the entrance and library, for Morris
did not * believe in ' making houses look like art galleries.
The decorations of a room should be part of their needful
architectural furnishings only.

So we seated ourselves on either side of the huge grey
oaken dining-table, with Morris at the head, who saw to
it that we partook liberally of the feast, while he enticed
us into his happy mood with amusing chat and stories,
addressing one or other of us in turn, so as to share
the conversation round. Mrs. Morris rarely spoke, but
Morris constantly referred his remarks to her with gentle
courtesy and affection.

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 49

After supper Morris brought us back to the library,
where we smoked and chatted till towards eleven o'clock,
when the other guests departed. He sat with me about
half an hour longer, then filling my hands with books
to have something to read in my bedroom, he expressed
his pleasure at my coming up to the Conference, and
wished me a jolly night's rest.

The next morning — Whit-Sunday — I was wakened
with the singing and trurnpetings of steamer-loads of
holiday seekers making for Kew Gardens, Hampton
Court Palace, and Richmond, and the merry tumult of
boating parties on the river. The sunshine was streaming
across my bed and seemed laden with the festive din. This
was my first Whit-Sunday experience in London, and
I recall the impression of public joyousness in English life
which the sound of this outside merriment made upon
my Scottish mind. Morris himself was early astir, and
came to see that I was all right and getting up. * This
is the morning of battle for us,' he said ; ' miserable kind
of battle though it be, it is imposed upon us, and we must
not be late for the fray.'

Breakfast over, we were joined in the library by Walker,
Tarleton, and several other comrades, delegates from the
Hammersmith and neighbouring branches, and were soon,
including May Morris, on our way, journeying by 'bus
from the Broadway to Farringdon Road, where the head-
quarters of the League then were, and where the
Conference was held. It is not my intention to give an
account of the Conference proceedings, the details of which
have passed from my memory, and, in any case, now
possess no interest. It is enough to say that the discussion,
or rather wrangling, continued the whole day from 10.30
in the morning till nearly 10 o'clock at night, with a
break at lunch-time and tea-time. Ernest Radford was,
I remember, chairman, and among those present was
Belfort Bax.

Almost every delegate present put in one or more

50 WILLIAM MORRIS

speeches. I cannot remember if Morris spoke in the
debate, but when the parliamentarian resolution was
eventually voted down about nine in the evening, he rose
and made a deeply earnest appeal for unity and good-will
all round. Mrs. Morris had expressed misgivings lest
he should lose his temper at the Conference. He had
promised her, however, that he would really behave
himself and be a model * good boy,' and he unquestionably
kept his word — though, as he admitted, not without
difficulty at times.

On our homeward journey he was in high spirits,
partly as a reaction from the strain of the long day's
wrangling and his self- repression, and partly because, as
he said, ' the damned business was over at least for another
year.' At supper table he requested May Morris and
myself to bear testimony to Mrs. Morris that he had
* never once lost his temper or said a choleric word.' Mrs.
Morris expressed herself as very glad of it.

Morris and the rest of our male selves sat up till
midnight in the library, chatting over the events of the
day and considering how to improve the propaganda work
of the League. When the others had gone, Morris pro-
posed that he should accompany me to my bedroom and
read a bit of * Huckleberry Finn ' to me before going to
sleep. * It will get the nasty taste of to-day's squabbling
out of our minds,' he said. Needless to say I welcomed
the proposal gladly, not dreaming what a tempestuous
experience it was going to bring upon me.

Closing the bedroom door, and seating himself by
the large candle on the dressing-table, Morris began turning
over the leaves of the book in order to select a chapter to
begin with. Having fixed upon a page, he was about to
start off reading when he said abruptly : ' By the way,
I forgot to ask you about your visit to the New Gallery
Exhibition yesterday afternoon. What did you think of
the Burne- Jones' pictures ? '

Now the fact was that in those days I knew very little

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 51

about modern paintings : and of Burne-Jones' paintings
I had only seen one or two photographic reproductions,
and knew really nothing about his style or principles of
art. As it happened, the only one of his pictures in the
New Gallery which I had particularly noticed was his
* Sea Nymph ' — a picture which, I think, exceeds any
other of his works in its challenging unconventionality.
The sea is depicted in quite an archaic fashion — as a child
might do, by mere curved interlacing bands of green colour,
without any attempt to represent the actual form of water
or wave. So I said in a blundering kind of way that I
had observed this picture, but hardly knew what to say
about it. It seemed to me as if the artist was trying to
imitate some very early style of art rather than nature
itself.

Then the heavens burst open, and lightning and thunder
fell upon me. Hardly had I completed my sentence than
Morris was on his feet, storming words upon me that
shook the room. His eyes flamed as with actual fire, his
shaggy mane rose like a burning crest, his whiskers and
moustache bristled out like pine-needles.

I was seated on the edge of the bed, and was too
astounded at first to comprehend what he said, or what
had aroused his extraordinary passion. But I soon realised
that I had been guilty of a mortal offence in what I
had said about Burne-Jones' picture, though whether the
offence lay wholly, or chiefly, in my seeming disparage-
ment of Burne-Jones, or, as is quite likely, in the display
of what he conceived to be my own and the popular
ignorance about art, I do not to this day know.

He poured forth an amazing torrent of invective
against the whole age. * Art forsooth ! ' he cried, ' where the
hell is it ? Where the hell are the people who know or care
a damn about it ? This infernal civilisation has no capacity
to understand either nature or art. People have no eyes
to see, no ears to hear. The only thing they understand
is how to enslave their fellows or be enslaved by them

52 WILLIAM MORRIS

grubbing a life lower than that of the brutes. Children
and savages have better wits than civilised mankind to-day.
Look at your West End art — the damnable architecture,
the damnable furniture, and the detestable dress of men
and women. Look at the damnable callosity of the rich
and educated who swill themselves in the rottenness of
their wealth in the face of the horrible want and misery
of the poor : and the poor who not only suffer the misery
and insult of it, but grovel before the ruffians who souse
them in it. They haven't the sense or pluck of rabbits.
But we must " think about environment ! " — oh, must
we ! Damn environment ! Don't think if the devil
pulls me by the ears I'm going to hell with him without
kicking his shins.'

In this strain he continued for I don't know how long,
flashing his wrath in my face, and moving round the room
like a caged lion. For a time I felt as though I had
in some way merited his terrible outburst, but I remember
recovering my wits and sitting back in the bed, saying to
myself * Well, be he ever so much a great man of genius,
he is really misbehaving badly towards me as his guest.
I simply won't mind him — let him blaze away.' But I
believe he was for the time being oblivious of me except
that I was one of mankind. He was really in a sort of

* prophecy ' against the scarlet woman of civilisation, and
although I had been unwittingly the cause of his frenzy,
I was not the object of it. Eventually there was a tap at
the bedroom door, and it was opened slightly from the
outside, and a voice expostulated : 4 Really, the whole
house is awakened. What is the matter ? Do speak
more quietly and let us get to sleep.'

This interruption acted as an exorcism. Morris
quietened down as suddenly as he had flared up. He lifted

* Huckleberry Finn,' which he had tossed on the bed in
the course of his fulmination, and making a turn round
the room, he offered me his hand in a most friendly
manner, remarking simply: ' I have been going it a bit

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 53

loudly — don't you think ? I hope I have not upset you
— I didn't mean to do that — and that you will have a
sound sleep. Good night and good luck.'

Next morning he came again to waken me at seven
o'clock, and was as cheery and charming as man could be.
Later on in the drawing-room I prostrated myself before
Mrs. Morris, pleading :

* Forgive htm — I was really not the culprit, though
it seems most unchivalrous on my part to say so.'

' Oh, I know it was not your fault, you don't need to
tell me,' she said, and added half-reproachfully, looking at
her husband : * I knew when I heard him boasting last
night of his good behaviour at the Conference that some-
body would have to pay for it.' Morris looked a bit
shamefaced, but affected not to acknowledge his delin-
quency, and appealed to me that we were merely having
* a little chat over art matters.' His daughter Jenny
said ' Oh, you wicked, good father,' and put her arms
round his neck.

And now observe the characteristic sequel. An
excursion of the Hammersmith Branch was to take place
that day to Box Hill. Morris had agreed to go ; many
of his personal friends were joining in the expedition, and
he was set for one of the sides in a cricket match. On
the previous evening he had explained about it to me,
and had asked me to join the party ; but as I had to be back
in Scotland early on the Tuesday morning, and was bound
to leave London by six in the evening at latest, I could
not go. Whereupon he expressed his regret at having
to leave me alone by myself, and invited me to make the
freest use of his library and his writing material if I wished
to do so, and alternatively offered me tickets for several
Art Exhibitions in the town.

But he had decided to change his plans. On being
reminded by his daughter May that it was time he was
getting ready for the outing, he informed her that he was
not going.

54 WILLIAM MORRIS

' But you promised to go, and they are all expecting
you,' she urged.

* Yes, my dear, but man, as you know, is a self-willed
animal, and I have decided 'tis my duty no less than my
pleasure to stay here and play the host properly to my
guest, who has come all the way from a foreign country
at my request and goes back to-night.'

And stay for my sake he did, and gave up the whole
day to entertaining me in all manner of ways. He took
me for a row upon the river, and on our return after lunch
he sat with me in the garden — a long orchard glade with
lawn, fruit trees, and flowers behind the house — telling
me of the change that had taken place in fruit and vegetable
cultivation from the olden days, and giving me many
curious instances of the feasting habits in the monasteries.
Afterwards he sat smoking with me in the library, showing
many of his rare book treasures, drawing my attention
to the pages of illumination and typography, and reading
to me one of the chapters in manuscript of his forthcoming
first volume of prose romances, * The House of the Wolfings,'
upon which he was then engaged. He then settled him-
self down to tell me a number of droll experiences in con-
nection with the business side of his work, and stories of
Bell Scott, Swinburne, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and other
of his more notable friends. Two of these I particularly
recall. One was of Sir John Millais, and was intended
as a sly dig at my Scottish vanity (Morris always believed,
or pretended to believe, that I was intensely patriotic as a
Scotsman, and liked to tease me about Scotland). Lady
Millais, he explained, was a Perthshire woman, and was, he
said, somewhat of a strict Sabbatarian, and, he added slyly,
* much addicted to the economical virtues of your country-
men.' One Sunday Sir John was playing in the garden
with the children, when he heard Lady Millais' voice from
one of the windows call * John, John ! ' * What is it,
my dear ? ' asked he The reply came, * If you will break
the Sabbath, you might as well be doing something useful,

FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE 55

and come in and paint.' Morris chuckled as he emphasised
the words. The other story was of Holman Hunt, who
spent several years out in Palestine getting local colour
for his Scriptural paintings. Hunt, Morris said, knew the
Arabic tongue well, but for reasons of personal safety
pretended not to know it, in order to hear the Mussulmans
talk freely among themselves. One day, as he was encamped
by the Dead Sea, painting in the mountain landscape
of his picture * The Scapegoat,' a number of Arabs
gathered round him and watched him paint with great
surprise and curiosity — for painting, or the making of
images of ' anything in the Heavens above or the Earth
beneath,' is strictly forbidden in the Mohammedan religion.
They could not at all understand the purpose of Hunt's
sitting there for hours, painting bit by bit the mountains
beyond, and offered each other all manner of extraordinary
explanations of the artist's conduct. At last one of them,
with an air of triumph, exclaimed ' I understand it, I under-
stand it ! He has discovered that there is gold in the rocks,
and he is putting the rocks into that frame so that when he
takes it to England he may extract the gold out of them \ '
This quaint explanation (which Morris added had perhaps
more truth in it than they were aware of !) was acclaimed
delightedly by the Arabs.

One of his stories about his business affairs concerned
a former manager of the firm, Warington Taylor, who
was, Morris said, a strangely silent and reserved man. Until
this manager came Morris had never, so he said, understood
whether the business was paying its way or not ; but this
man every year at Christmas time gave him a statement
of accounts, which always included a sort of ' budget,' or of
what Morris' own outlays during the next year ought to
be, even to quite personal details — such as so much for
wine, so much for books, for benevolence, and so on. Morris
never knew whether the manager was at all inclined
favourably towards Socialism, but when he died suddenly
a curious thing came to light. Morris had to examine

56 WILLIAM MORRIS

some of the papers left in the manager's private desk, and
among them noticed the draft of an estimate which he
(the manager) had sent for some proposed decorations in
a church. Morris had always wondered why the decora-
tions had never been ordered from his firm, especially as
the Vicar of the church was a personal friend of his own,
so he now scanned the estimate with some curiosity to see
if there was any very obvious overcharge in it. What was
his surprise to find in the estimate, underneath the items :
' To providing a silk and gold altar cloth, so much,' the
proviso, written in the manager's own hand :

' Note. — In consideration of the fact that the above item
is a wholly unnecessary and inexcusable extravagance at
a time when thousands of poor people in this so-called
Christian country are in want of food — additional charge
to that set forth above, ten pounds.'

' That,' said Morris, * at once explained our not getting
the order ; but I was more than delighted that the chap
had done it. You see,' he added with a chuckle, * I had
succeeded in making the dear old chap something of
a Socialist after all ! '

In this way the afternoon passed, Morris bestowing
his whole attention upon me. I felt deeply touched to
think how generously eager he was to make happy in every
way my remembrance of my visit. When eventually
I had to leave for my train, he insisted on stuffing my pockets
inside and out with cigars and nuts and fruits ; he wanted
to give me a flask of whisky or brandy * in case of accidents/
and that I should accept the loan of a rug for my night
journey. He walked with me down to the Broadway and
saw me off at the underground station, loading me with
magazines from the bookstall, and assuring me that my
visit had been a joy to him.

Thus ended my first visit to Kelmscott House, and
aglow with the delight of it I returned as happy as though
I had been endowed with the richest estate in the land.

CHAPTER VII

A PICNIC ON THE THAMES

ALTHOUGH denied the enjoyment of the holiday excursion
to Box Hill with Morris and our Hammersmith comrades,
as stated in the foregoing chapter, I was fortunate in
having a more privileged outing with him on another
occasion. Holiday expeditions were one of Morris*
favourite enjoyments. He was remarkably fond of any
kind of outdoor recreation which he could share with
his friends ; and considering his extraordinary zest for
work and how constantly busy was his whole life, it is
surprising how much pastime and holidaying he succeeded
in snatching from the hours and days as they passed. He
seemed ever ready for some diversion or adventure ; and
even during the most strenuous period of his Socialist
agitation we have constant glimpses in his letters of his
relaxing himself in some outing or amusement.

The occasion I am about to speak of was in the summer,
I think, of 1889, when I spent a few days at Kelmscott
House. Morris had written me, urging me to come on
the Friday evening, or at latest on the Saturday morning,
in order to join in a picnic trip on the river. ' Come on
Saturday if you can,' he wrote, ' and you may have another
opportunity of showing your disgust at the scenery of the
pock-puddings of the South ' — an allusion to my having
spoken disparagingly of the scenery of the Home Counties
in retaliation for his having said that there were * no rivers
in Scotland, only some mountain torrents.'

57

58 WILLIAM MORRIS

I arrived at the Mall in time for breakfast on the
Saturday morning, and Morris was as gleesome as a school-
boy at the prospect of the day's expedition. About ten
o'clock Ernest Radford came along and announced that
the boat was ready for us at the little water-gate directly
in front of the house.

* And we are ready for it, don't you think ? ' Morris
chuckled, pointing to the heap of provisions gathered on
the table. * Now for a fair divide of the load.'

Our party consisted of Radford, Emery Walker, Jenny
Morris, Morris, and myself. We looked a miniature
commissariat corps as we filed out of the house down to
the jetty ! Morris, who insisted on carrying the bulkiest
packages himself, seemed expanded to twice his usual
dimensions. His jacket pockets bulged out hugely with
two long bottles of wine, and a satchel stowed with
eatables was slung over his shoulder. Each of us carried
a package of some sort, and I feel sure the youngsters who
watched our embarkation fancied we were going on a
week's voyage at least !

Radford and Morris took the oars ; Morris divesting
himself of his coat, so warm and breezeless was the
morning. The tide was with us, and our little craft sped
up the river like an arrow. Morris was brimful of chat
about the scenery on the banks, and entertained us with
all manner of allusions to incidents and persons associated
with the various parts of the river. He wanted us to sing,
suggesting some old seafaring * chanties,' and as none of
us seemed in a vocal mood, he hummed rhymes to himself
as he swung his oars.

Arriving at a point of the river near Richmond which
had been fixed upon as the place of disembarkation, the
boat was drawn in to the bank and duly made fast. We
unloaded our provisions on the grassy slope, and Morris
at once took upon himself the duties of Master of Cere-
monies. He insisted on doing everything himself — opening
the packages, laying out the plates, knives and forks, and

A PICNIC ON THE THAMES 59

glasses, and uncorking the wine bottles. What a feast
was spread before us on the white linen napkins on the
grass ! — rolls of bread and pats of butter, veal-and-ham
pies, boiled eggs, nuts, pears, and a delectable salad com-
pounded by his own hands, three bottles of wine, and I
know not what else. It seemed enough for a company
of twenty, yet not many basketfuls were left over when
we had had our will with them. And all the time Morris
kept our fancy on the wing with stories and curious lore,
and droll comments on the comestibles he had laid before
us. He took delight in gently teasing his daughter Jenny,
ascribing imaginary sayings to her as the repository of the
wisdom and foibles of her sex ; and in speaking to me,
or of me, as the fellow-countryman and friend of * William
Wallace wight/ John Knox, Rob Roy, or other Scottish
celebrities, displaying, I confess, an acquaintance with
incidents and characters in Scottish history and Walter
Scott's novels well beyond my range.

Our lunch over, we were about to gather up the un-
broken remainder of the feast, when Morris, noticing a
group of children lingering near by and eyeing our pro-
ceedings enviously, invited them to the freedom of our
table, an invitation which they accepted with manifest
surprise and delight.

We then went up Richmond Hill. Morris had pro-
mised me that I should see from the Hill one of the most
beautiful landscape views of its kind anywhere in England
or elsewhere to be seen, and he observed me with quite
boyish expectation as I looked round the beautiful sweep
of the river and the wonderful curves of spreading meadow
and woodland fading away into the luxurious haze of the
afternoon. In a perverse way I affected to be quite unim-
pressed by the scene, and his disappointment was so evident
that I immediately repented myself of my affectation and
acknowledged the great beauty of it. We lolled for an
hour or more on the bank of the hill, Morris and Radford
recalling snatches of poetry relating to the country within

60 WILLIAM MORRIS

view, and contrasting passages from the Greek poets with
those of our English poets on landscape themes. They
spoke also about pictures of the scene by Turner, Constable,
Linnell, and other artists, Morris expressing himself
emphatically, as was his wont, for or against them, but
always with some reason annexed which showed how keen
was his discernment of their respective qualities and how
far from mere whim was his judgment of them.

Some arrangement being made for the return of the
boat which I cannot recall, we ourselves returned by way
of Richmond and Kew, Morris taking a pleasure in buying
' Maids of Honour ' (a famed delicacy of the place) for
Jenny. His devotion to her all the way was beautiful to
see. We rambled a good deal among the quainter parts of
Kew, and eventually took the train home about eight o'clock
in the evening.

In the adjoining compartment of the railway carriage
(the compartments were partitioned only half-way up) there
was a crowd of boys, who made a great row, singing schoolboy
catches and thumping with sticks on the floor and partition.
Morris at once caught up the spirit of their frolic, and much
to Jenny's disapproval (which was, I suspect, assumed as
part of her role, for the occasion, of a well-bred daughter
with an obstreperous father) thumped back to them through
the partition and joined in their singing, keeping time
with them by pounding his feet on the floor.

At Kelmscott House an interesting company gathered
in the library that night. Philip Webb, Carruthers, Bernard
Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Walter Crane and Andreas Scheu,
Walker and Radford. I do not remember if the gathering
was a chance one, or if there was some project under
consideration. But not elsewhere in all the land I fancy
was there such wonderful conversation let loose between
four walls that evening.

CHAPTER VIII

A RED-LETTER DAY

SUNDAY, March 25, 1888, was a memorable day for~our
Socialist League group in Glasgow. Then it was that
Morris, who had come on one of his lecturing visits, spent
a whole day long with us in our branch rooms, giving us
such a full feast, so to speak, of himself, his Socialism,
and his outlook on life, that the occasion has remained for
myself and many who were present one of our most delight-
ful memories of the Socialist movement. I must, therefore,
try to make some record of it, though I cannot hope to do
more than convey in outline the impression which the day's
experience had upon our minds, for so much of the pleasure
and inspiration which we derived from it depended on the
intense glow of Morris' personality, on his spoken words,
and on his striking modes of expression and manner, which
my pen cannot reproduce.

Our gathering consisted of about a couple of dozen of
the active workers in the branch, together with a few
outside sympathisers. Among the latter were D. M.
(now Sir Daniel) Stevenson and his brother R. A. M.
Stevenson, the artist, J. P. Macgillivray, sculptor, Craibe
Angus, art dealer, W. R. M. Thomson, patent agent,
Dr. Dyer, late Principal of an engineering college in
Japan, and William Jolly, H.M. Inspector of Schools.

It was a cold, wettish, wintry morning, and the occasional
flakes of snow boded ill for our public meeting in the evening.
Nevertheless, when we were all gathered together about

61

62 WILLIAM MORRIS

10.30 in the morning in the branch room with a blazing
fire, cheerfulness filled the place. A long table ran the
length of the room, at the head of which Morris sat under
the window. Our conversation began at once. We
appointed no chairman, but Mavor offered our guest a few
words of welcome on behalf of the meeting, and invited
him to speak. Whereupon Morris rose and gave a short
address on the principles of the Socialist League, and on
its doings in London, particularly with reference to the
Free Speech troubles which were then exciting political
interest. This done, Morris invited those present to ply
him with questions as freely as they wished, either on the
matter of his address or on any aspect of Socialism or the
movement. * I shall,' he said, * most gladly answer any
question put to me, if I can ; if I cannot, I hope some other
of our comrades will try his hand at it. But I also want
you, on your part, to tell me something about the movement
in Scotland : what your special difficulties are in getting
people to accept Socialism ; and what your ideas are about
how to push the movement ahead.'

There was no lack of questions. At first the topics
bore closely on Socialism — the policy of the League, and
the more puzzling objections to Socialism which Socialists
had to encounter in those days — but soon the scope of
enquiry broadened out into the whole field of industry,
politics, history, art, and literature. Whatever the nature
of the question, Morris replied with unfailing willingness,
even when, as in some instances, the question was of a
directly personal nature, such as ' Why don't you carry out
your Socialist principles in connection with your own
business ? ' * Why does the firm of Morris & Co. object
to advertise its manufactures ? ' * Do you dress uncon-
ventionally as you do in a blue-serge suit and discard white
linen on principle as a Socialist or as a craftsman, or simply
as a matter of personal taste ? ' — these latter questions
coming from the visitors.

For fully two hours Morris submitted himself to this

A RED-LETTER DAY 63

interrogation with the utmost good-nature ; constantly
refilling and lighting his pipe and occasionally taking a few
puffs from it. At times he would rise from his seat and
bestride himself in front of the fireplace, restlessly, as was
his custom, balancing himself now on one foot, now on
the other. It were vain my attempting to give even the
substance of what was in fact a two hours' discourse. Nor
can I, as I have said, attempt to convey any adequate im-
pression of the richness of ideas, the variety of illustrations
from history and his own experiences, the amusing sallies,
and occasional fiery outbursts against existing conditions
of civilisation which outpoured in his replies. How
unfailingly humane and generous were all his views of life !
how idealistic his hopes of what Society might be, and yet
how rightdown practical were all his references to the
actual means and measures of changing the present system !

As an example of how closely he tackled the argumen-
tative side of questions, I might instance his reply to the
question * Does not revolutionary Socialism involve Anar-
chism ? ' It was one of the longest of his replies, and the
subject was one concerning which he felt strongly. I give
as nearly as I can recall the actual words he used.

* I call myself a revolutionary Socialist,' said Morris,
* because I aim at a complete revolution in social conditions.
I do not aim at reforming the present system, but at abolish-
ing it ; and I aim, therefore, not at reforms, either on their
own account, or as a means of bringing about Socialism as
the eventual outcome of a series of palliations and modifi-
cations of Capitalistic society : — I aim at bringing about
Socialism itself right away, or, rather, as soon as we can
get the people to desire and will to have it. But, mark you
again, what I aim at is Socialism or Communism, not
Anarchism. Anarchism and Communism, notwithstanding
our friend Kropotkin, are incompatible in principle. Anar-
chism means, as I understand it, the doing away with, and
doing without, laws and rules of all kinds, and in each
person being allowed to do mst as he pleases. I don't

64 WILLIAM MORRIS

want people to do just as they please ; I want them to con-
sider and act for the good of their fellows — for the common-
weal in fact. Now what constitutes the commonweal, or
common notion of what is for the common good, will and
always must be expressed in the form of laws of some
kind — either political laws, instituted by the citizens in
public assembly, as of old by folk-moot, or if you
will by real councils or parliaments of the people, or by
social customs growing up from the experience of Society
The fact that at present many or the majority of laws and
customs are bad, does not mean that we can do without
good laws or good customs. When I think of my own work
and duties as a citizen, a neighbour or friend, a workman
or an artist, I simply cannot think of myself as behaving or
doing right if I shut out from my mind the knowledge I
possess of social customs or decrees concerning what is
right-doing or wrong-doing. I am not going to quibble
over the question as to the difference between laws and
customs. I don't want cither laws or customs to be too
rigid, and certainly not oppressive at all. Whenever they
so become, then I become a rebel against them, as I am
against many of the laws and customs to-day. But I don't
think a Socialist community will require many govern-
mental laws ; though each citizen will require to conform
as far as possible to the general understanding of how we
are to live and work harmoniously together. But, frankly
and flatly, I reckon customs, if they are bad customs, to
be always more oppressive and difficult to get rid of than
political laws. If you violate political laws you have the
policeman and the soldiers, maybe, against you, but when
you violate social customs you have the whole of the com-
munity against you. In the one case you may be regarded
as a criminal and fined, imprisoned, or even put to death,
any of which contingencies is bad enough no doubt ; but
in the other case you are regarded as a churl, a kill-joy,
a bigot, a humbug, and unless you are a thick-skinned
wretch, or are sustained by a powerful sense of conscience

A RED-LETTER DAY 65

and duty, as you can only be on really very big matters,
your life may be made wholly tasteless and intolerable both
to you and your friends. And what is life worth then ?
In a word then, I tell you I am not an anarchist, and I had
as lief join the White Rose Society, or the so-called " Liberty
and Property Defence League," as join an anarchist
organisation.'

When delivering this exposition of his views on anar-
chism Morris walked about the floor, and spoke as in
the heat of debate. It was a subject which, as has already
been said, caused him no end of bother at that period, as
there was already growing up in the League a strong
anarchist faction — a faction which eventually succeeded,
in fact, in driving Morris from the editorship of the
Commonweal, and splitting and destroying the Socialist
League.

The multitude of the topics dealt with by him in his
replies was, I have said, remarkable. Some idea of
their range and variety may be gathered from the following
synopsis which I noted at the time : — Did he believe in
* Scientific ' as opposed to * Utopian ' Socialism ? Did he
accept the Marxist or the Jevonian theory of value ? What
was the real point of difference between him and Mr.
Hyndman ? and were they still personal friends ? Did
he regard the Fabians as being genuine Socialists ? Did
he not think that the Socialist agitation would strengthen
reaction, by detaching working men from the Liberal Party
and frightening middle-class people into the Tory ranks ?
Was it consistent for Socialists to ally themselves, as they
virtually were doing, with the Irish Party, seeing the latter
sought to establish Peasant Proprietorship, which would
make Land Nationalisation more difficult ? Did he not
think the Henry George Single Tax proposal an adequate
solution of the economic problem ? Did he think Trade
Unionism was a help towards Socialism ? Was it consistent
for Socialists to be capitalists ? Why did he not consider
St. Paul's Cathedral beautiful ? Was it true that he pre-

66 WILLIAM MORRIS

ferred Chaucer to Shakespeare, and did not admire Milton ?
What did he think of Michael Angelo ? Was Swinburne
likely to become a Socialist ? Was Burne-Jones a Socialist ?
And (inevitably) how did Robert Burns rank as a poet ?

This last question afforded Morris an opportunity of
breaking from the fetters of the inquisition. * Don't you
know,' he replied adroitly, * that I am constitutionally
incapable of giving an opinion on your national bard ?
So at least a Scotch friend of mine, and one of the best
linguists and best informed literary men I know of, tells
me. No man, he says, but a Scotchman can really under-
stand and appreciate Burns, and I have the misfortune not
to be a Scotchman, but a pock-pudding Englishman. He
tells me that were I a Scotchman and able to appreciate
the real greatness of Burns' genius, I should set him above
Shakespeare, Dante, Virgil, and Homer. But it is perhaps
just as well, after all, don't you think, that I am not a
Scotchman, for in that case I should not have been William
Morris, and should not have had the pleasure of meeting
you to-day, and inflicting a two hours' Socialist sermon on
you.'

As the day advanced the weather had not improved.
A cold, drizzling sleet was falling, and the sky had become
quite dusk. It was now after one o'clock, and most of those
present were already late for their dinner or lunch. To
our delight, Morris announced that he would willingly
spend the afternoon with us, and we decided to adjourn
the meeting, on the understanding that those who cared
to do so, or were able to do so, should return at 2.30.
Whereupon, our gathering broke up, and I took Morris
off to lunch at a restaurant — MacArthur's in the Trongate,
the solitary dining establishment then open in Glasgow on
Sundays.

When we returned to the rooms, a regular snowstorm
had begun, and only some seven or eight of the branch
members had returned to join our afternoon's symposium.
So dark was it that we had to light the gas. But although

A RED-LETTER DAY 67

all was dark and wild without, we were bright and merry
within.

Morris was evidently pleased to find himself in a smaller
company, and especially, so I thought, on discovering that
those present belonged to the working class. He seemed,
curiously enough, as I then and on many other occasions
noted, when in the company of strangers, to feel more at
home and freer in his manner when among working men
than when among men of his own class. He chatted in a
chummy way with those around him, asking about their
employment, and surprising us all by his acquaintance with
the practical skill and usages of their crafts. He told
amusing stories of his experiences in speaking at meetings
in workmen's clubs in London — ' sometimes to less than
a dozen listeners after travelling right across London, and
spending a whole evening on the job.'

* But now,' he said, ' you asked me this morning why
I became a Socialist ; suppose I in turn ask some of you
chaps to tell me what brought you to Socialism ? I confess
I cannot help wondering, when I find myself in a group of
comrades, why they particularly have heard the word gladly
while the mass of their fellows have turned from it with
deaf ears.'

Rather shyly one or two of us recounted, as best we
could, the circumstances that had led us to leave the accus-
tomed paths of politics. Our replies seemed almost as
though we were each reciting the same story by rote.
We had all, it appeared, from our boyhood days felt, without
knowing why, the injustice of the existing system of leisure
and riches on the one hand, and hard toil and poverty on
the other. Our reading — and in most instances Burns and
Shelley, Carlyle and Ruskin were among the authors men-
tioned— had further aroused our minds on the subject.
Then had come the Highland Crofters' revolt, and Henry
George's ' Progress and Poverty ' and ' Land for the People '
agitation. Lord Beacons field's * Sybil,' Kingsley's ' Alton
Locke,' Mrs Lynn Linton's ' Joshua Davidson,' and Victor

68 WILLIAM MORRIS

Hugo's ' Les Misdrables ' were also mentioned among the
books that had proved stepping-stones out of the old ways
of thought.

Morris expressed surprise that none of us appeared to
have read More's ' Utopia ' or any writings of the more
definite pre-Marxian Socialist thinkers — Robert Owen, St.
Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, and the like. * As for Marx,'
he said, 4 his writings were, of course, hardly known in
this country outside the foreign revolutionary groups in
London until Hyndman drew attention to them. Besides,
until a couple of years or so ago, even his " Capital " was
published only in German and French, and is of such an
analytical character that it had practically no influence in
creating Socialist thought in this country. I am not,
however, so much surprised to find down here in Scotland
that you working chaps apparently found each your own
way to Socialism without even being in contact, as we in
London were, with foreign revolutionary influences, as
that you have all come the same road, so to speak, and that
road has simply been the road of the reading and political
experience common to the more thoughtful of the Scotch
working class generally. Our comrade, the Rev. Dr.
Glasse of Edinburgh, tells me practically the same thing.
It looks as though one and all of you have been what is
called " born " Socialists — Socialists, that is to say, by nature
or temperament to begin with — and that, I suppose, is true
of the majority of us who are as yet in the Socialist ranks,
especially those who feel impelled to become apostles of the
Cause.'

4 The truth is,' Morris added, 4 that there has always
been a making of Socialists, and a making of Society towards
Socialism, going on since human history began. I have
recently been looking a good deal into the literature of the
Middle Ages and earlier periods of European history, and
have been struck with the definiteness of Socialist feeling,
and even Socialist customs, among the people and monkish
sects of those days. I am writing some chapters for Com-

A RED-LETTER DAY 69

monweal on the Revolt of Ghent, and on John Ball and the
Peasants' Revolt in England in Richard IPs day, in which
I hope to make this better understood in the movement.'

This theme seemed to call his thoughts back to olden
times, and he told us many stories and sayings illustrative
of the Socialist ideas and customs of bygone days. He
repeated to us the verses ' Mine and Thine ' translated by
him from the Flemish of the fourteenth century, which were
afterwards published in the Commonweal and in his * Poems
by the Way.' One of the stories which he told with great
relish was of two monks in the early Church who were
discussing the causes of enmity and war amongst mankind.

* It is all owing to private property,' said one of the two
monks. * But what is private property ? ' asked the other.
His companion explained to him that private -property was
any kind of thing which one person alleged belonged to
himself, and which no one else had any right to, but there
was always someone else who would be claiming possession of
it, and thus the two claimants would fall fighting each other
for it. * Dost thou now understand, brother ? ' asked the
first monk. * Nay, brother, I do not,' replied the other.

* Well, let me show thee. It is this way : Thou shalt
say to me that the missal which is in thine hand is thine,
and I shall say "Nay, brother, it is mine," and shall
seek to take it from thee. Thereupon thou must refuse
to let me take it : and forthwith thou and I shall strive
against each other for it. Now, brother, let us begin.
I now say to thee that the missal which is in thine hand
is mine, and therefore thou must give it to me.' Where-
upon the other monk, instead of refusing him the missal
and withholding it, replied * Why, brother, if the missal
be thine, surely thou shalt have it,' and so saying he yielded
up the missal ungrudgingly. And thus the good monk's
object-lesson all came to naught.

Morris chuckled gleefully in telling this story. He
then suggested that we should have some singing ; he wanted,
he said, to hear some of our old Scottish songs.

7o WILLIAM MORRIS

Luckily two of our comrades were good singers. James
Thomson (a great-grandson of the poet Burns), who had a
delightfully pure tenor voice, sang Burns' * I gaed a waefu'
gate yestreen ' and * Mary Morrison.' McKechnie, a
young West- Highlander with a capital baritone range and
an endless repertory, sang one or two Gaelic songs and several
Scottish humorous songs, including ' The barrin' o' the
door,' ' The wee Cooper o' Fife,' and ' Phairshon swore
a feud.' Morris was greatly taken with McKechnie's
singing, and joined with us in the choruses. McKechnie
then sang Greave's Irish song * Bally hooly,' heard by us
for the first time.

Sung as it was with great Celtic gusto, the song fairly
captivated Morris, and again and again he hummed over
the rollicking refrain * And they call it lemonade in
Ballyhooly ! ' A month or two later, when I visited him
in London, he chanted snatches of the song as I sat with
him while he was designing some tapestry piece in the
library.

It was now evening. The outside world was dark and
deep in snow, and our hopes of having a crowded meeting
at the evening lecture had completely vanished. There
was only just time for a cup of tea, which was served in
the rooms, before going to the meeting. We then linked
hands together and sang * Auld Lang Syne,' hailed the
coming of the revolution and International Socialism, and
marched forth on our tramp through the ankle-deep snow
to the Waterloo Hall.

At the hall we had to distribute among us the details
of manning the pay-box, selling literature, and acting as
stewards. To our pleasant surprise, notwithstanding the
snowstorm, quite a good audience turned up for the lecture,
at least 500 — a couple of hundred more would have crowded
the hall. The subject of the lecture was * Art and Industry
in the Fourteenth Century,' which, needless to say, Morris
wrought into a magnificent vindication of the aims and
hopes of Socialism. He was in excellent trim on the plat-

A RED-LETTER DAY 71

form, notwithstanding his exhausting all-day-long session
with us in the rooms, and he agreed without a grumble after
the lecture to return with us to the rooms for a final rally
with the comrades.

And thus ended our memorable day with Morris 'all
to ourselves ' in Glasgow. Walking home at midnight
(for it was nigh midnight by the time one or two of us
had seen Morris back to his hotel), a workman comrade then
attending the university, who knew more of Morris' writings
than any other of us then did, said to me with great earnest-
ness, as he bid me good-night : * This is the greatest day of
my life, and I can never hope to see the like again. I no
longer doubt the possibility of an earthly Paradise. I feel
as if Balder the Beautiful were become alive again and had
been with us to-day. If one can speak of a God amongst
men, we can so speak of William Morris as he has been with
us this day in Glasgow.'

NOTE. — In Commonweal, June 5, 1888, Morris gave an account
of his Scottish tour on this occasion. The tour included the
following itinerary: Thursday (Mar. 21), Kilmarnock ; Friday,
Edinburgh ; Saturday, West Calder ; Sunday, Glasgow ; Monday,
Edinburgh again; Tuesday, Dundee; and Wednesday, Aberdeen.
Here is his note on his Glasgow visit : —

' On Sunday I went to Glasgow, and here I had every reason
to damn " the nature of things " as Person did when he hit his
head against the door-post ; for it came on to snow at about one
o'clock and snowed to the time of the meeting harder than I ever
saw it snow, so that by 7.30 Glasgow streets were more than ankle-
deep in half-frozen slush, and I made up my mind to an audience
of fifty in a big hall ; however, it was not so bad as that, for it
mustered over 500, who passed nem. con. a resolution in favour
of Socialism. Owing to the weather, our comrades could not
attempt the preliminary open-air meetings which they had in-
tended to do ; so I passed the day with them in their rooms in
John St. very much to my own pleasure, as without flattery, they
were, as I have always found them, hearty good fellows and thorough
Socialists.'

CHAPTER IX

A PROPAGANDA OUTING

A FEW of us in Glasgow were accustomed on Saturday
afternoons during the summer months to go to some neigh-
bouring town or village, there to spread our * glad tidings.'
Learning of this on the occasion of one of his visits to
Scotland, when he lectured at Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow,
Hamilton, and Paisley, Morris at once volunteered to join
our expedition in the afternoon. The place chosen for
our outing was Coatbridge, one of the chief and most
dismal iron-smelting, engineering, and coal-mining towns
in Scotland. There were six of us in all, including Morris,
and we took the train from the Buchanan Street Station
about three o'clock.

Morris was in high spirits, and exhibited to the full that
rare combination of boyishness and masterfulness, jollity,
seriousness, and explosiveness that made so attractive his
character and companionship. We had an amusiag ex-
perience at the outset of our journey. Among our group
was a builder's carpenter, who, though enrolled as a member
of the League, rarely turned up except when Morris,
Kropotkin, Edward Carpenter, or some other notable
person was on the scene. On this occasion, hearing that
Morris was to be with us, he decided to form one of the
company. Unfortunately, it being * Pay Saturday,' he
had spent some of his earnings in a public-house, and was
in an obviously disordered condition. As soon as we were
planted in our seats he addressed Morris, sans ceremonie.

72

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 73

* I always like to come and hear you and the other big-
wigs of the movement,' he said; 'but I can't be bothered
listening to the small fry. But I don't look on you as a
great orator — you don't mind me telling you that ? As
a speaker you are not in the same boat with John Burns.
But you have a mighty sight more in your head than he has. I
haven't read any of your poetry, but I expect it's uncommonly
good. A man with a head like yours is bound to have great
ideas in it. I'm a bit of a phrenologist, you see. Have
you ever read Dr. George Combe's works ? '

Morris, who listened to the carpenter's familiarities
with amusement, replied that he had not.

* Then, sir, you've missed a treat. Combe was one of
the greatest thinkers this country has produced. He beats
your Bacon, Locke, and Berkeley altogether.'

Having delivered this judgment, the carpenter relapsed
into a dozing condition in his corner. A few minutes later,
observing through the carriage window the glowing cupola
of the steel works and blast-furnaces of the Parkhead Forge,
Morris remarked that the district reminded him of Middles-
brough, and said something about Sir Lothian Bell, the great
ironmaster of that neighbourhood. At the mention of Sir
Lothian Bell's name, our carpenter friend pricked up his ears.

* Sir Lothian Bell — Sir Lothian Bell,' he muttered,
as if dimly recalling the name. Then after a pause, and
looking hard at Morris, he asked, ' What do you know
about §ir Lothian Bell ? *

4 Why,' replied Morris, * I just happen to know a little
about him. You see I worked for him once.'

The carpenter sat up astounded. * What ! * he ex-
claimed. * You mean to say you have worked for Sir Lothian
Bell ? I don't believe it.'

* Well, believe it or not, my friend, it is a fact none the
less,' said Morris, tickled at the man's absurdity. Scruti-
nising Morris' face to discover if he was in some way fooling
him, the carpenter repeated his declaration : * I don't
believe it.'

74 WILLIAM MORRIS

4 But why should you not believe it ? ' asked Morris,
ignoring the incivility of the denial. * You see, I am a
workman, at any rate in my own way, though doubtless
you do not reckon us artist sort of chaps as workmen.
The truth is, I decorated Sir Lothian Bell's house for him.
And I worked precious hard, too, I can tell you, at some
parts of the job, as I think you would have allowed had you
seen me at it, lathered from top to toe in plaster and paint.'

* You really mean to say you worked in Sir Lothian
Bell's house ! ' cried the carpenter now fairly excited.

* I assure you I did, my friend,' replied Morris good-
humouredly, but surprised at the carpenter's excitement.

* Well, I never ! But do you really mean it ? — you're
not kidding me ? '

* Of course not — why should I ? '

* Well, that beats everything ! ' shouted the carpenter.
* Why,' he said, with almost solemn emphasis, ' / worked at
Sir Lothian Bell's house myself ! '

* You did ? ' exclaimed Morris. * Why, it's quite a
remarkable coincidence, isn't it ? You and I may there-
fore call ourselves workmates as well as comrades. Let
us shake hands on it.'

The carpenter rather grudgingly extended his hand,
and, looking with dull suspicion at Morris, kept muttering to
himself : ' Well, I never — well, I never ! But I only
half believe it,' — until he again dozed over in his corner.
Later on our two miles' walk sobered him up, but conscious
that he had been making rather a fool of himself he kept
silent for the remainder of the day.

Morris was now about to display himself in one
of his explosive moods. Our train instead of stopping at
Coatbridge bowled ahead to the next station, Whifflets,
about two miles farther on. We had, it appeared, boarded
the wrong train at Glasgow. The mistake was mine ;
for noticing the name * Airdrie ' on the destination board,
I had assumed that, as the train was a stopping train, it would
stop at Coatbridge, as was customary with the Airdrie

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 75

trains. I did not, at the moment, acquaint Morris with
our misadventure, hoping that at Whifflets we might get
a train back to Coatbridge with little or no delay. On our
disembarking I spoke to the guard, complaining that no
notice had been put up to warn passengers that the train
would not stop at Coatbridge. Morris, who was waiting
with our comrades a little farther up the platform, observing
that I was having some little altercation with the guard,
at once came along to enquire what was the matter. I
told him, of course, what had happened, and that we should
likely have to walk back two miles.

* Oh, that's it ! ' exclaimed Morris, flaring up instantly
into an amazing state of indignation. * I don't mind having
to walk the two miles, but I do mind that these damned
railway companies should treat the public in the shabby
way they do. It's all because they won't pay wages to have
sufficient men to look after the convenience of the public '
And thereupon he broke out into a terrific diatribe against
railway companies in general, denouncing them as ' mean,
lousy thieves and scoundrels,' saying all manner of dreadful
things against them. He directed his abuse on the guard,
who, standing with flag and whistle in hand, was too
astounded at the wonderful apparition and infuriation of
the blue-garmented sun-god or sea-god before him to say
or do anything. I tried to persuade Morris to come away,
but he would not. Meanwhile the passengers, hearing
the disturbance on the platform, were looking out of the
windows with mingled amusement and amaze. Thoroughly
ashamed of my illustrious companion's misbehaviour, I
left him in the midst of his expostulation, and, joining the
rest of our company, we made over the footbridge to the
other platform, where we ascertained that there would be
no train back to Coatbridge until two hours later.

The train having moved off, Morris crossed over the
bridge and came leisurely sauntering towards us, humming
contentedly some tune to himself. He was already a
transformed being. Observing that we all looked rather

76 WILLIAM MORRIS

disconcerted, he asked if * anything else was wrong.'
I replied no, but ventured to upbraid him gently for his
violent behaviour, pointing out that the guard was not in
any way to blame either for the misdoings of railway
companies or for our present misadventure.

* Of course not/ replied Morris, cheerfully. ' But
we've got to blow up someone, don't you know. If we
don't, nothing will be done to remedy matters. I hope,
however, the guard didn't think I was bull-ragging him.
Of course he didn't — he looked quite a sensible chap. Now,
shan't we have a refreshment, and get our shanks on the
road ? ' He looked so imperturbably good-humoured that
it was incredible that only a minute before he had been a
blazing pillar of Olympian wrath. It was as that instant
change from storm to sunshine which never ceases to
astonish us in the moods of children.

Proceeding on our way back to Coatbridge along the
dry, coal-dusty road, with its dreary stretches of 'colliers'
rows,' Morris' interest in everything he saw never flagged.
He plied us with questions about the miners, their politics,
their wages, and mode of spending their leisure. He noted
(with many an imprecation) the effects of the ironworks
on vegetation, and stopped occasionally to note the way-
side flowers struggling for life here and there among the
grimy hedgerows ; and every now and then quoted some
old saying, or told some amusing story illustrative of the
subject on hand.

When we got to Coatbridge we had no little difficulty
in deciding where we should hold our meeting. The police
were exceedingly hostile to any sort of open-air meetings,
religious or political, in the town, because of the frequent
rows bordering on riots which they occasioned between
the Orangemen and Roman Catholics, who formed a large
part of the population. The street corners adjacent to
public-houses, where the workmen were mostly congregated,
were, I knew from past experience, forbidden us ; and the
few vacant pieces of ground elsewhere discernible gave

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 77

no promise of our getting an audience. Eventually we
fixed on a sort of cinder-heap underneath the Gartsherrie
blast furnaces, near, I think, to where the present fountain
stands. We borrowed a chair from a neighbouring cottage,
spread out our Commonweals and tracts as showily as
we could, and ranged ourselves round so as to make our-
selves look as big a crowd as possible. (How familiar all
these proceedings still are at our Socialist open-air meetings !)

We selected as our first speaker Pollack (a brass-finisher),
on account of his having a powerful voice, hoping thereby
to attract the passers-by and a few miners who were leaning
against a neighbouring blank wall. But the stratagem
did not succeed. The miners, finding they could hear what
the speaker was saying without moving closer in, clung
to their gable wall, giving no indication that they were in
the least interested in what was being shouted in their
ears ; while the passers-by, hearing the words * Socialism '
and ' Labour,' were satisfied that the subject was of no
interest to them, and passed unheedingly on. Experience,
I may say, has long since taught us that the better way to
begin an open-air meeting is to put up a speaker who will
address only those close to him and do so as quietly as possible.
Curiosity as to what he may be speaking about almost
invariably draws the beginnings of a crowd, if crowd there
is at all to be had.

Pollack's efforts proving fruitless, I then made a try ;
and eventually, after about twenty minutes' haranguing, drew
into the ring about a dozen listeners by dwelling upon some
of the more notorious facts concerning the firm of Baird
& Co., the owners of the neighbouring blast furnaces and
the then wealthiest iron and coal masters in Scotland.

I now introduced Morris, failing not, of course, to impress
upon my scant audience the great favour which we were
bestowing on them by bringing so illustrious a man to
speak to them in Coatbridge. Morris, who had been
fidgeting round the ring all the time, making audible assents
to points in the speeches, and whose personality was evidently

78 WILLIAM MORRIS

the object of much curiosity among those gathered round,
seemed glad that his turn to speak had now come, partly,
I think, because (as always) he wanted to be doing some-
thing, and partly because he felt a bit nervous about addressing
meetings and was anxious ' to get the job done.'

The chair (as so often happens in the case of chairs
borrowed for such a purpose) was rather a rickety one,
and Morris, having mounted it and feeling his foothold
somewhat unsafe, at once dismounted from it with a shrug
and a suppressed expletive, declaring he would plant himself
on a firmer foundation. He put together a few broken
bricks, by way of a foothold on the cinder heap, and began
by addressing his hearers as ' Friends and fellow-workers.'
How superb he looked, with his broad, blue-clad sturdy
figure and his fine tousled head !

I had suggested to him that he might speak on the
better days of labour in the olden time, as being a topic
likely to engage the interest and sympathy of the crowd — a
suggestion which he willingly adopted. But he began, as
he often did, on a personal note.

' I have addressed you,' he said, ' as " friends and fellow-
workers," and I do not do so merely in a complimentary
way You are, I hope, my friends, though I know none
of you personally. At any rate I really don't know that
I am the enemy of any man or woman in the world, unless
they be sheer scoundrels seeking positively to harm other
people. I want everybody to be friends and to behave
towards one another as real friends always do ; that is to
say, trying to be happy with one another, and sharing as
far as possible every means of making themselves happy.
And that, as I shall explain later on if you will listen to me,
is just the sum and substance of what Socialism means,
which we have come here to preach to you this afternoon.
And I call you " fellow workers " because, though I am, as
you have just heard, a writer of poetry and such like, and
what is called an artist or designer, I nevertheless do a
great deal of work with my hands, hard work too, sometimes,

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 79

not only for the pleasure of doing it, but actually, as you
folk do here, as a means of livelihood. But I tell you
frankly that I should not, even if I could, work at the kind
of work and in the kind of way of working, that you do —
not even though offered a thousand pounds a week for so
doing, instead of the paltry one or two pounds a week which
you are asked to be content with, and which I regret to
think you so frequently are content with. Sooner than
work in an ironworks or coal mine as you folks do for ten
or twelve hours a day, every week day, year out and year
in, all my life, I should rebel rather, and take whatever
consequences my rebellion might bring upon me.

* But I shall tell you what kind of work I should like
to do, and what conditions I should like to work under,
and I should like you and all workers to have. And to
show you that what I speak of is not a wholly impossible
thing, as many people suppose Socialist conditions of work
would be, I shall, if you will listen to me just a little while,
tell of how working people used to live and work in this
country — in England, at any rate — so far back as five hundred
years ago, before there were any labour-saving inventions
or any of the wonderful means of producing wealth easily
and abundantly that we nowadays possess.'

With this characteristic opening, Morris proceeded
with his story (retold by him so often in his lectures) of
how the workers worked and fared in the fourteenth cen-
tury, the ' Golden Age of English labour,' as it has been
called, concluding his address with a warmly affectionate
account (I can hardly think of a better phrase) of what work
and life might again be under Socialism. He spoke in his
accustomed conversational way, his voice fairly strong, though
inclining to grow husky towards the end. The evening
had grown dark while he was speaking, and huge gleams
of flame from the furnaces darted across the sky. The
audience had now augmented to some sixty or eighty, chiefly
miners, who listened with marked attention and interest.
There were, however, a sprinkling of ' drunks1' among the

8o WILLIAM MORRIS

listeners, who kept up a running fire of interjections, par-
ticularly an Irishman, who at intervals, as if seized with a
recurrent spasm, shouted unintelligible threatenings about
Home Rule, King William of Orange, and Socialism. But
the crowd shouldered him off.

One elderly woman, who had stood by during the greater
part of the address, listening with pathetic interest to every
word, remarked as she was moving away : * He's a guid
man onyway ; for he looks an honest man, and he speaks
the guid truth. My ain father, who was a great Radical,
used tc say muckle the same thing as this gentleman here ;
but the working folk round aboot thocht he was cracked.
The working folk noo-a-days hae awfu' little gumption in
their heads, and I'm sorry to think a gentleman like this
should waste his pains trying to put common sense into
them/

Questions were invited, and a gentleman — for such in
style he evidently was — asked permission, not to put a
question, but to say a few words. Morris nodded his head
in assent, and the gentleman, who we learnt later was the
cashier, or some other high-placed official in the neigh-
bouring ironworks, without moving from his place, spoke
to this effect :

* You people don't, I suppose, know who the gentleman
is who has been addressing you. He is one of the leading
men of literature and art of our day, and it is one of the
greatest surprises of my life to find myself so unexpectedly
listening to him address a meeting of this kind in Coat-
bridge. I am not a Socialist, and don't at all share his
Utopian hopes of improving society — I wish I could, but
all my experience denies them — but I greatly admire his
works, both his poetry and his art, and I wish to say that
I am sorry I did not know of his coming, for I am sure he
is entitled to a much better meeting and to much more
comfortable conditions for speaking than he has here at
this cinder-heap.'

Morris in a reluctant sort of way thanked the gentleman

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 81

for his friendly remarks, but assured him that he regarded
it as an uncommon delight to come to Coatbridge, or else-
where, with his comrades and share in their propaganda
experiences.

* And after all, my friend/ he added, with a twinkle
in his eye, * I wish to remind you that this is just the sort
of way that Diogenes and Christ and, for all we know,
Homer, and your own Blind Harry the Minstrel used
to get their audiences ; so I am not so far out of the
high literary conventions after all ! And besides, what we
Socialists are out for is not to win the support of the
dilettante literary and art people (though we don't in the
least degree exclude them from the hope of salvation), but
of the working class, who suffer most by the present system
and have the most to gain by upsetting it and putting Socialism
in its stead.'

There were a number of questions. One particularly
— it was put by a miner — Morris answered with evident
pleasure : * Does the lecturer propose to do away with
coal-mining, and, if so, what would we do for fuel ? '

' Our friend's question is quite a proper one,' replied
Morris ; * but I must warn him that on some of these
industrial matters I am regarded as somewhat of a heretic,
even amongst Socialists. For myself, I should be glad if we
could do without coal, and indeed without burrowing like
worms and moles in the earth altogether ; and I am not
sure but we could do without it if we wished to live pleasant
lives, and did not want to produce all manner of mere
mechanism chiefly for multiplying our own servitude and
misery, and spoiling half the beauty and art of the world
to make merchants and manufacturers rich. In olden days
the people did without coal, and were, I believe, rather more
happy than we are to-day, and produced better art, poetry,
and quite as good religion and philosophy as we do nowa-
days. But without saying we can do without coal, I will
say that we could do with less than half of what we use
now, if we lived properly and produced only really useful,

82 WILLIAM MORRIS

good, and beautiful things. We could get plenty of timber
for our domestic fires if we cultivated and cared for our
forests as we might do ; and with the water and wind
power we now allow to go to waste, so to say, and with
or without electricity, we could perhaps obtain the bulk
of the motive power which might be required for the
essential mechanical industries. And, anyway, we should,
I hope, be able to make the conditions of mining much more
healthy and less disagreeable than they are to-day, and give
the miners a much higher reward for their labour ; and also
— and this I insist is most important — no one ought to be
compelled to work more than a few hours at a time under-
ground, and nobody ought to be compelled to work all
their lives, or even constantly week by week, at mining,
or indeed any other disagreeable job. Everybody ought to
have a variety of occupation, so as to give him a chance
of developing his various powers, and of making his work
a pleasure rather than a dreary burden. I have tried to
answer our friend's question fairly, but I can hardly hope
that, not being, maybe, a bit of a dreamer like myself, he
will be satisfied with it.'

* You have answered my question quite straight,' said
the miner, * and I believe there is much truth in what you
say.'

With the advance of the evening the ground had now
become thronged with people, and a cheap-jack and a
Salvationist band had made their respective appearance in
close proximity to our meeting. A lively competition for
the favour of the crowd therefore took place between the
oratory of the poet of the ' Earthly Paradise,' the drumming
of the Salvationists, and the blatant vociferations of the
cheap-jack, who, quite unconscious of the grim mockery
of his performance, was displaying rolls of loud-coloured
linoleum and wall-paper which he described as * the newest
and best designs on the market, fit to make the homes of
the working class vie with the palaces of princes.' Morris
did not appear to notice the nature of the fellow's wares,

A PROPAGANDA OUTING 83

but the challenge of the situation roused his combative
instincts, and he was loth to stand down. * We've got to
get the biggest crowd, let's have another pitch into them,'
he said. But his voice was wearing out, so Stephen Downie
mounted the chair and held on for another quarter of an hour.

We then ended our meeting with a final appeal to the
audience to buy Commonweal and our Socialist pamphlets.
We returned by train to Glasgow full of cheer in our
adventure, except when Morris, watching the flare of
furnaces and steel retorts through the carriage window —
* putting out moon and stars,' as he said — fell into moments
of saturnine gloom. On arriving in Glasgow we were
hungry and thirsty, and Morris wished to stand us * drinks
round and something to eat ' at the station restaurant, but
two of our members being teetotallers, he, with a whim-
sical ' umph,' agreed we should go to a temperance place
instead, and there we regaled ourselves on lemonade and
sandwiches.

We accompanied Morris to his hotel door, and as he
shook hands with us, our carpenter comrade, who had kept
himself severely in the background since his misdemeanour
in the afternoon, expressed to him the hope that he had not
offended him by his behaviour in the train. * I am much
ashamed of myself, and hope you'll forgive me,' he said.

* I'm not the least offended, my friend,' Morris assured
him cheerily. * Why should I be ? You didn't mean to
offend me, and I admit it did look as if I was trying to pull
your leg a bit. Besides you have seen how I can misbehave
myself, and I ought to ask you all to forgive me. So good-
night and good luck to you all : ' I have enjoyed the outing
hugely.'

CHAPTER X

EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS AND AFTER

THE Art Congress held in Edinburgh in 1889 proved a
somewhat memorable occasion for the Socialist movement
in Scotland. The Art Congress was founded in London
by a number of artists and craftsmen, with the object of
* advancing the interests of Art and Industry ' by widening
public knowledge of the work of present-day artists and
designers. The first general gathering of the Congress
was held in Liverpool the year previous to the Edinburgh
meeting, and was attended by the President of the Royal
Academy and a host of prominent artists and craftsmen,
including Morris and Walter Crane, who read papers at
the sectional meetings. Its proceedings were widely noticed
in the press, the members were feasted at public banquets
and entertained in the houses of wealthy citizens, and the
gathering was reckoned a great success.

The Edinburgh meeting promised to be no less success-
ful. With a view to enhancing the lustre of the gathering
the promoters had secured the patronage of the Marquis of
Bute as president for the occasion. Great attention was
bestowed on the assembly by the Scottish press, and the
fashionable portion of the Edinburgh citizens vied with one
another in showing hospitality to the visitors.

But a blight fell upon the repute of the meeting almost
at the outset, in quite an unexpected and absurdly incon-
sequent way. Again, as at the Liverpool gathering, Morris
and Crane, together with Cobden-Sanderson and Emery

84

EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS 85

Walker, who, Socialists as they were, stood in the forefront
of their respective branches of craftsmanship, were invited
to give addresses at the sectional meetings. Much to their
own surprise and to the no small annoyance of the pro-
moters of the Congress, this little group of intransigents,
because of the Socialist strain in their discourses, attained
great prominence in connection with the proceedings —
a circumstance that caused considerable commotion in the
public mind. Their presence at the Congress was spoken
of by a section of the press as a cleverly devised Socialist
conspiracy to capture the Congress, while the promoters
were rebuked for giving them a place on the official
programme.

One newspaper accused Morris and his friends of
having turned the Congress into a Socialist demonstration,
while another lamented the regrettable intrusion of revolu-
tionary Socialist politics into the peaceful republic of the
Arts. The headline * Art and Socialism ' flourished in
the columns of all the newspapers during the week, and the
subject was alluded to in many pulpits on the following
Sunday.

Needless to say, we rank-and-file Socialists in Scotland
were in high feather over the affair. We could not have
wished for a more desirable advertisement of our Socialist
principles. Hitherto Socialism had been associated in the
press mainly with troublesome free-speech and unemployed
disturbances, and a few nugatory election candidatures in
London. We had now the gratification of seeing Socialism
flamed in the public eye as the tutelary divinity of the
Muses, the true spiritual progenitor of genius and all the
wondrous achievements of art and literature which adorn
the ascent of humanity.

This was for us a great stroke of fortune. Nor was
the exultation dictated by any want of consideration for
the interest of art. Whether or not, as the Edinburgh
Evening News alleged, * the Socialists had spoiled the
Congress,' the incident had at any rate given a big lift to

86 WILLIAM MORRIS

the Socialist movement, and we all of us, Morris and his
colleagues included, felt that the advance of the Socialist
cause was of incomparably greater importance to the
advance of art than was the success of an annual junketing
of artists and fashionable dilettanti. Was it not self-
evident that an Art Congress, especially one whose professed
object was to promote * the interests of Art and Industry,'
which could be spoiled by the propaganda zeal of one or
two of the foremost art craftsmen of the day, was already
foredoomed to futility ? Anyway, whether wittingly or
unwittingly 'spoiled by the Socialists,' the Edinburgh
meeting proved to be the last assembly of the short-lived
Art Congress Association.

Morris commented briefly on the Congress in the next
issue of the Commonweal :

* The Art Congress,' he wrote, * was on the whole a
dull affair, and would have been very dull indeed, but that
to a Socialist its humours showed some signs of the times.
It goes without saying that, though there were people present
who were intent on playing the part of Art-philanthropists,
all the paper readers, except the declared Socialists, showed
an absurd ignorance of the very elements of economics ;
and also, of course, that the general feeling was an ignoring
of the existence of the working class except as instruments
to be played on. . . . Socialist artists and craftsmen (since
there were none but Socialists capable of taking on the job)
were set to lecture audiences of Edinburgh working men
on the due methods of work for producing popular art,
though both lecturers and workmen audiences knew but too
well that such art was impossible for wage-slaves to make
or enjoy.'

* However,' continued Morris, ' the said lecturers did
not hide this fact under a bushel ; and since, as a reactionary
Edinburgh evening paper angrily declared, the Socialists
had ruined the Congress, it is probable that their plain
speaking had some effect. It must also be said that the

EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS 87

working-men audiences received any allusions to Socialism,
or any teaching founded on it, with more than assent, with
enthusiasm rather. The definitely Socialist meetings, held
under the auspices of our Edinburgh friends, were very
successful, and the local Socialists are well satisfied with the
result of the week.'

The Rev. Dr. John Glasse bore similar testimony in
the pages of the Commonweal :

' The presidential address (to the Crafts section) by our
comrade Morris drew the largest gathering of the week.
Nothing could have been better than the effect produced,
for the audience not merely admired its ability, but were
moved by its reasoning. The most successful of all, however,
were perhaps the lectures given to working men. They
were led off by Morris and Crane, and finished by Walker
and Sanderson. We were not only much gratified by the
reception given to our comrades, but proud to think that
they had been found most competent to address the workers
on matters relative to their handicrafts.'

Such were the circumstances and nature of the alleged
Socialist * Conspiracy ' that * ruined the Art Congress,'
and incidentally invested the Socialist agitation in Scotland
with a modest glamour of intellectual prestige. It is now
quite forgotten, I suppose, in the Socialist movement itself,
but at the time it was a great windfall to us, * the feeble
band and few,' who were striving by means of our hoarse
shoutings at forlorn street corners, and our lecturings in
shabby out-of the-way halls, to rouse our million-fold fellow
citizens from centuries of ignorance and prejudice, and
persuade them that in our * fantastic and impossible schemes '
lay the only hope and means of the social redemption of
mankind.

Thenceforth our propaganda was treated with greater
respect by the public and the press. Our lecturers were
invited to speak at public conferences and in the lecture-

88 WILLIAM MORRIS

courses of polite religious and literary societies. And not
the least gain was the part the affair played in bringing
about the rapprochement between the Socialist and the
younger art movements. It was from the Edinburgh
Art Congress incident that we must date the beginning of
that remarkable bent towards Socialism among the students
of the Glasgow and other art schools which soon afterwards
became one of the most significant facts in the culture of the
period. Within half a dozen years fully more than a half of
the art students in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and later in
Manchester, Birmingham, and other centres, were either
avowed Socialists or were largely influenced by Socialist
ideas.

I must briefly relate the interesting experience we had
in Glasgow with our Art Congress comrades during their
visit.

On the Sunday following the Congress, the four
* culprits/ as Morris called them, were, as it happened,
booked to address a meeting in Glasgow under the
auspices of the Glasgow branch of the Socialist League.
Crane was to give his lecture on * The Educational Value
of Art,' with blackboard illustrations, Morris was to
preside, and Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were to give
short addresses. This was a big catch for us, and it grieved
us sorely that we could not obtain the City Hall for the
meeting, and had to be content instead with the Waterloo
Hall, which held at most only some 800. As it turned
out, however, this hall proved large enough for the meeting
— the rainy evening and the charge for admission, is.
and 6^/., yielding us an audience that just comfortably
filled the hall.

Our visitors arrived from Edinburgh on the Saturday
evening, and about a dozen of us improvised a little gathering
with them in the hotel. They were all in good spirits over
the success of the Edinburgh gatherings, and Morris hit
off amusingly the crudities of some of the ' old Duffers,'
as he called them, who had been pompously speaking of art

EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS 89

as a kind of mumbo-jumbo fetishism for the working class.
' Just the sort of tommy rot that curates talk about religion
at mothers' meetings, and Oxford professors say about
education at Cutlers' Feasts.' He instanced, I think,
Sir William Richmond's address in one of the sections,
and a paper sent in by G. F. Watts, as among the few
Congress utterances that showed any grasp at all of the real
bearing of art on the lives and work of the people.

The conversation then, to our younger folks' delight,
turned to literature and art topics, Mavor, Craibe Angus,
and R. A. M. Stevenson keeping up the Scottish end of it.
Morris, I remember, mentioned the forthcoming publication
of his ' Roots of the Mountains,' which was to be printed
and bound in a new style, and this led to a talk about typo-
graphy, mainly between Morris and Emery Walker. In
the course of this talk Morris told us how he had first
broached the idea in 1885 of setting up as a printer himself,
an idea which eventuated in his founding of the famous
Kelmscott Press. But the subject was highly technical,
and I doubt if any of us ordinary chaps realised the important
project that was then well on the way to success.

Thinking that the visit of our distinguished comrades
would afford a good opportunity of bringing into touch
with the movement a number of outsiders who might be
in sympathy with Socialist ideas though not inclined to
join any political Socialist body, we had arranged to hold a
sort of reception gathering and conference on the Sunday
afternoon. It would, at any rate, we thought, be an inter-
esting way of gauging to what extent interest in Socialism
was spreading among the more intelligent of our fellow-
citizens.

Our invitation list included several of the university
professors, a number of architects, artists, and literary
people, a number of town councillors and public men
associated with social reform schemes, and a number of
leading trade unionists, co-operators, land restorers, Ruskin
Society members, and the like. We calculated that the

90 WILLIAM MORRIS

presence of our four visitors would attract a fairly large
gathering, and had booked one of the Waterloo rooms,
capable of seating 200 to 300, for the occasion. But the
attendance, partly, no doubt, because of the blustering wet
weather, proved disappointing, only some fifty or sixty people
making an appearance. None of the professors came,
and only one, Edward Caird, I think, sent a sympathetic
apology. A few artists, D. Y. Cameron, John Guthrie,
John Lavery, R. A. M. Stevenson, and Francis Newbery
among them, if I remember rightly, formed almost the only
representation of the ' brain workers,' apart from the little
group of university scholars in our own branch. Of the
rest, the Single Taxers and trades council members made
the best show, and the co-operators the poorest. The
meeting, nevertheless, proved quite an instructive and enjoy-
able gathering. Morris, Crane, and Cobden-Sanderson gave
short addresses and answered a wide variety of questions ;
and some outspoken comments on Socialists and their
methods of agitation were made from the benches.

Several Trade Union speakers complained that Socialists
adopted a too preceptorial attitude towards Trade Unionism,
and failed to appreciate the immediate needs and demands of
the working class. This objection Cobden-Sanderson fully
endorsed, but pointed out that the lead of Socialist thought
came almost wholly from middle-class thinkers, owing to
the general indifference or hostility of working-class leaders
towards Socialism. It was only by an effort of the imagin-
ation that men like his colleagues and himself could visualise
the situation and outlook of working men. We would
not have a real Socialist movement in this country until
the working class abandoned Liberal and Tory politics and
became a great Labour and Socialist Party, moulding Socialist
ideals and principles into practical shape for themselves.

A good deal of criticism was levelled against the anti-
Parliamentary policy of the Socialist League, and the general
feeling of the meeting, apart from our own members, was
that the League's attitude in this respect greatly weakened

EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS 91

its Socialist appeal to the working class. A veteran Glasgow
Green debater, * Old John Torley,' as fiery in speech as in
the colour of his hair, but withal brimful of good-humour,
made a breezy onslaught on those * High Art Socialists who
designed silk curtains and velvet cushions, and got out hand-
printed books bound in Russian leather, which only the idle
spongers on the toil of the workers could afford to buy.*

In reply to this and several other questions relating to
art, Morris made a personal statement in which he re-
affirmed in substance what on many previous and after
occasions he found it necessary to say respecting his own
position. He acknowledged that under present-day con-
ditions of wealth and labour the pursuit of art and literature
was to men like himself a mere sort of truant boy's pastime
— a fiddling while Rome was burning. * For myself,' he
said, * I often feel conscience-stricken about it, and if I knew
any corner of the world where there was social equality
I should pack up and go there at once. But I am not
attracted, as some good men both in present and bygone
times have been, with the idea of going out into the wilder-
ness, either as an anchorite or as one of a group of Socialist
Fifth Monarchy men. I don't want to get out from among
my fellow men, for with all their faults — which are not
theirs only but our own — I like them and want to live and
work among them. My Utopia must be pitched square in
the midst of them or nowhere. But, as I say, I often feel
conscience-stricken about enjoying myself, and enjoy myself
much I confess I do in my art and literary work, while
the mass of my fellows are doomed to such a sordid and
miserable life of servitude around me. Were it not for
my work and the hope of Socialism, I believe life would
be positively unendurable to me — as in truth it should be
to every man possessed of any aesthetic or moral feeling
at all.'

At the evening meeting Morris made only a short speech
as chairman, alluding good-humouredly to the criticisms of
the press on his own and his colleagues' addresses at the Art

92 WILLIAM MORRIS

Congress. He had, he said, had the privilege of addressing
Glasgow audiences quite a number of times during the past
five years, and on this occasion he wanted them to hear
his comrades Walter Crane and Cobden-Sanderson.

Crane was hardly what is called a good lecturer. He
had little flow of language, no vigour of statement, and
spoke in rather a jerky fashion. But there was a certain
archness and occasionally an epigrammatical flavour in his
remarks which, together with much gracefulness of gesture,
made it pleasant to listen to him. In appearance he was
almost ideally the artist. His finely shaped head, beautiful
face with clear, kindly eyes and handsome moustache and
short, pointed beard, together with his finely proportioned
and mobile figure, gave him the look of a troubadour who
had stepped out of some medieval page. After a few
introductory remarks he asked for the blackboard, which
was thereupon shifted from the side of the platform to the
front, Morris, Cobden-Sanderson, and Walker meanwhile
leaving their seats on the platform in order to witness his
sketching from the body of the hall.

Crane's facility as a draughtsman was a matter of public
repute. Most artists of ability are able to draw off-hand
familiar objects with ease and considerable precision ; but
Crane's facility was exceptional. The audience were de-
lighted to see him take his chalk, and, beginning at the tail,
with a few rapid sweeps of his arm, and without once breaking
his stroke, evolve the outline of a cow. A few more strokes
and a maid with a milkpail and a farmstead in the distance
were brought in. Then came, interspersed with comments,
the * Crag Baron,' the ' Bag Baron ' (with a forest of smoking
chimney stalks in the background), and the Capitalist elephant
on the tortoise of Labour. There were a number of in-
genious ' ideographs ' symbolising the evolution of plant
and animal life. A series of sketches giving his idea of
how much more attractive dress, houses, and cities might
be made completed his illustrations He was heartily
cheered at the conclusion of his lecture.

93

Cobden-Sanderson, like Crane, was a new personality
to our Glasgow audiences, but his name was fairly well
known from press notices of his beautiful work in book-
binding shown at Arts and Crafts Exhibitions, and from
the circumstance that he had, on becoming a Socialist,
given up his career at the parliamentary bar in order to
practise in some degree his principles by engaging in work
that might be honest, useful, and beautiful. The press,
too, had but recently recorded his marriage with Annie
Cobden, one of the daughters of Richard Cobden, the
famous Free Trade advocate, herself well known as a
suffragist agitator, noting also the fact that he adopted his
wife's name with his own as a joint surname. He was an
accomplished platform speaker, clear and crisp in phrase,
keenly argumentative, and with fine animation in his delivery.
He told how he had come to realise the wrongfulness of
the present class system of society — its falsehood in com-
merce, in law, in politics, and in personal morality, and
how he could no longer with self-respect participate in its
deceptions, and had decided to devote himself to some
kind of productive work that could be not only honest
and useful but beautiful. The speech made a deep impres-
sion on the meeting.

Though announced as one of the speakers, Emery
Walker did not address the meeting. Morris * let him off '
at his own request, as he shrank much from public speaking.
Even on his own special subject of the printers' craft he
only lectured on rare occasions. But he was well known
in Socialist circles as the Secretary of the Hammersmith
branch of the League, and as one of the unofficial art
group of London Socialists. Morris esteemed him as one
of his closest friends, and consulted him on matters of
business and art, a thing he rarely did with others. He was
personally known among us in Glasgow from visits he had
paid us in our branch rooms when on business in Scotland

We adjourned from the hall to our branch meeting
rooms, where we had an hour's chat, chiefly about the internal

94 WILLIAM MORRIS

affairs of the League. To us of the Glasgow branch the
day had been a festival. We were full of joy in the com-
panionship we had had with our London comrades, whose
earnest zeal for Socialism and whose unaffected camaraderie
and willingness to help and encourage us deeply impressed
us all. We felt that there was something new and won-
derful in the fellowship of the Socialist cause, and that we
were veritably on the threshold of a new era of history.
Was not the dawn already aglow on our brows and in our
hearts ?

CHAPTER XI

AS GUEST AND COMPANION

IT was a joyous, though at times a somewhat exciting,
experience, to accompany Morris on a sight-seeing expedition,
especially when amidst unfamiliar surroundings. One had
a sense of pleasant unrest, a feeling of expectancy that
some interesting adventure was on hand, that something
unwonted would occur. One forgot oneself listening to
his talk and observing his movements, and one's attention
was kept constantly on the alert.

But always his companionship was delightful, and the
hours spent with him left an unfading fragrance in the
mind.

I am now about to tell of a Sunday I had with him in
Glasgow when, as he announced to me, he was going to
have ' a day off,' except for his evening lecture and a couple
of hours at his ' Odyssey,' and that I might do with him as
I pleased. During his earlier visits he was usually the
guest of some friend, such as Professor John Nichol, Dr.
Dyer (then prominent in the Scottish Co-operative Move-
ment), or R. F. Muirhead, M.A., one of the members of
our League. But he preferred to stay at an hotel, where
he could be more at liberty to give his spare time to writing
and where he could more freely invite workmen comrades
to have a chat with him. On this occasion he had arranged
to put up at the Central Station Hotel, but had agreed to
be my guest at my mother's house during the day.

I met him on his arrival by the night mail train from
95

96 WILLIAM MORRIS

London about seven o'clock in the morning, and after
leaving his bag at the hotel and slinging his familiar ' haver-
sack ' over his arm, we set forth together for breakfast at
my mother's house on the south side of the river. Although
the morning was bright and warm in the spring sunshine,
hardly a soul was visible in the streets ; and as we walked
round by George Square in order that Morris might
despatch a telegram at the Central Post Office, we seemed to
be almost the only inhabitants of the city. Morris had on
former visits been shown the leading thoroughfares and
sights of Glasgow, including the Square which is reckoned
the architectural cynosure of the city. His opinion of my
native town, which Robert Buchanan with a fine stretch
of imagination described in his Exhibition Ode as * the
dark, sea-born city with its throne on a surge-vexed shore/
was not a complimentary one. He had only seen Glasgow
under various aspects of wet and dismal weather. This
morning, however, the Square, bathed as it was in spring
sunshine, with its flower-beds in freshest bloom, and clear
of the hubbub of the trams and other week-day traffic,
had an air of modest capitoline splendour that seemed to
gainsay bravely the sweeping dispraise of its detractors.

Morris glanced at the Palladian edifice of the City
Chambers, still looking assertively new, that fronted the
Square. The vehemence and rudeness of his expression
on first seeing this building a couple of years before had
astonished those who were with him, and he again turned
his face from it with an unquotable epithet of contempt.
Looking round the Square at the Post Office, the Merchants'
House, and the far-stretching range of elaborate facades of
banks and other commercial offices in St. Vincent Place,
his face hardened. * Renaissance and the devil be damned ! '
was his comment; and addressing me he added ' Allow me,
my friend, to remark, being as this is the Sabbath day, that
your respected city, like most of its commercial kind, is,
architecturally speaking, woefully bad, and I fear impeni-
tently so. Your young " Scots wha hae " of the Glasgow

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 97

School don't appear to have laid their reforming hand on
your city architecture. Ruskin thirty years ago, in a lecture
on architecture, called Glasgow the ** Devil's Drawing
Room." He would hardly feel obliged to amend his
judgment of it to-day, if this is the best that Glasgow can
show.'

I told him, however, that a little farther westward,
where many new insurance, shipping, and other commercial
premises were now being built, there were signs of better
things. In several instances bold innovations based on the
old Celtic style had been introduced by the younger architects.

* I'm glad to hear it,' he said, ' though I doubt me much —
— if you don't mind my saying so — about the applicability
of your old Celtic style to the amenities of joint-stock
money-grabbi ng. '

The statutes dotted round the Square amused him.
* It seems to me,' he said, * that the idea has been to give
the place the aspect of a cemetery — you Scottish folk being,
as one of your own writers has said, much addicted to grave-
yard reflections. Is it not your own Laird of Logan who
avers that Scotchmen are never really happy save when they
are at funerals ? ' 1

Looking up at the Scott monument, a tall column
surmounted with an effigy of the great novelist, in the middle
of the Square, he observed, * But at any rate your Walter
Scott is a worthier wight to thrust up in the Almighty's
face than our London Trafalgar Bay hero.' Of Robert
Burns' statue he remarked, * They've tried, don't you think,
to make your ploughman poet look something of a fine
gentleman, with his pigtail, his ribboned breeches, and silver-
buckled shoes ? But I suppose a certain degree of class-
respectability, in dress at least, is obligatory for admission
into your post-mortem court of celebrities.' After going

1 I had sent him a copy of the Laird of Logan, an old book of
Scottish anecdotes. But the saying is not there. It is a familiar
tag among Scotsmen when affecting self-depreciation among
Englishmen.

98 WILLIAM MORRIS

round the Square, he remarked, * You have statues to Scott,
Burns, and Campbell, but none to Dunbar or David Lindsay.
Nor is there, Craibe Angus tells me, any memorial in
Glasgow to William Motherwell, though he was a Glasgow
man, and one of your best poets, besides being among the
first Britishers to perceive the greatness of old Scandinavian
literature. You have the illustrious heroes Victoria and
Albert, but not Wallace or Bruce. Curious, isn't it ? '

As we were crossing the river he stood for a moment
looking at the huge unsightly girder-bridge of the railway
spanning the river and completely blocking from view the
western course of the water-way. I thought he was about
to explode against the monstrous eyesore, but he turned
away from it with a weary gesture. * I wonder,' he said,
speaking rather to himself than to me, * if the time will
ever come — and God ! surely it must come — when to do
a thing like that will be reckoned as devilish as poisoning
wells or burning down churches and museums of Art.
We speak of ourselves as a civilised people and yet are capable
of ghoulish vandalism like that.'

Our house in Crown Street was one of the tenement
flats universal in Glasgow, except in the West End and
suburban neighbourhoods. Morris had already some notion
of the Glasgow tenement system, but was curious about
some of the arrangements of the dwellings that were unfa-
miliar to his English eyes. Ours, though one of the more
spacious and improved dwellings of its class, was, like all
other tenement houses in Glasgow, provided with nothing
in the shape of a garden except the customary * back-court '
or * green ' used for drying clothes, and common to all the
tenants. Speaking of the absence of garden plots anywhere
in Glasgow, he said he did not know whether to be more
surprised that the Glasgow people were not all revolutionists,
or that any of them had enough imagination left in them to
be Socialists at all.

* I wonder,' he mused, * what sort of chap I should have
been, Glasier, had I been brought up a fellow townsman of

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 99

yours ? Bannockburn does not appear to have done much
for your city's elbow room, whatever it may have done for
the " Liberty's in every blow! " that you sing about.'

At breakfast he enquired of my mother about the
arrangements among the tenants for the using of the * green/
and seemed pleased to hear that usually little or no mis-
understanding arose over the allocation of space and respective
washing days. ' I have always found it so,' he said, * respect-
ing the use of common property when there is reasonable
equality of need and where self-interest is disciplined by
established custom. I don't suppose there ever was much
bother in the olden days among the village folk respecting
the use of common land or any of the old parish possessions,
so long as the people were mostly neighbours and pretty
nearly on the same social level ; and even nowadays in
the English villages the people get on in a much more
friendly way over their public property rights than over their
private property concerns.'

My mother was becoming accustomed to entertaining
Socialist agitators whom her son invited home with him,
often without forewarning her of his intention ; but like
so many Scottish, and especially Highland hostesses, she was
somewhat shy of new guests, particularly when they were
persons of public fame or visitors from other countries.
Though she did not at that period know much about
Socialism, except that, like Irish Land Leaguism and
Atheism, it was regarded as a highly disreputable and
dangerous doctrine, she respected and welcomed whom-
soever her son brought to her door.

Such diverse personalities ^as Andreas Scheu, Leo
Melliet, Lawrence Gronlund, the Rev. Dr. Glasse,
Prince Kropotkin, Stepniak, Henry George, and Edward
Carpenter had thus sat at her board, and each had presented
a fresh problem of hospitality to her, so concerned was she
that they should be * welcome ' in every sense of the word.
But with Morris, as with the others, she was soon wholly
at ease. His unaffected courtesy and simplicity of manners

ioo WILLIAM MORRIS

won her confidence at once, and it was a joy to me to see
him and my mother so completely at home with each other.
She had wondered what to make ready for breakfast, but I
had assured her that he was not * faddy ' about his food,
and that she need have no misgivings about his enjoying
the customary fare of her table. So she had made him a fine
ashetful of our own favourite Sunday-morning dish, to wit,
ham, eggs, sausage, and haddock, with home-baked scones
and oat-cake. He enjoyed the menu greatly, and said so
(I should hardly have forgiven him if he hadn't !), and, his
appetite being keen after the long train journey and the
morning walk, he ate quite heartily, which rejoiced her heart.
He chatted freely, but not obtrusively, keeping his conversa-
tion upon topics likely to be of common interest round the
table. Learning that my mother knew Gaelic, he asked
her about the West Highland pronunciation of certain words
that had a common Gaelic and Latin root, and he told my
sisters about some of the curious domestic customs in Iceland
which he had observed during his visit to that country a
dozen or so years previously.

After breakfast I sat with him in the front room, he
meanwhile drawing from his * haversack ' an Odyssey and
a Greek lexicon preparatory to his daily task of translation.
He had much delight in the Odyssey, because it afforded
so many glimpses into the everyday life and feeling of the
Ionic people ; many of the incidents and customs in the
poem were remarkably akin to those described in the Norse
Sagas.

I left him in the room by himself at his Odyssey, while
I went over to Glasgow Green to take part in our usual
Sunday morning open-air meeting of the League. He
offered to accompany me, but I knew he was pressed to
get on with his Odyssey translation, and assured him that
our comrades would feel that he had done his duty amply
by them if, in addition to giving his evening lecture, he
turned up at our afternoon meeting and said a few words.

On my return I found him chatting with James Mayor

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 101

and Archibald MacLaren, assistant professor of Greek in
the Glasgow University — and, I think, R. F. Muirhead,
M.A., all three members of our branch, whom I had invited
to join us at midday dinner. In the conversation at table
Morris asked about the attitude of the Glasgow professors
towards Socialism. He was told that only Edward Caird,
of the Moral Philosophy chair, showed any sympathy with
Socialist ideas or indeed with democratic politics of any kind.
Professor John Nichol of the Literature chair, who had
formerly been a strong Radical and friend of Mazzini, was
now an embittered Unionist, while Lord Kelvin and the
Science and Medical men were almost without exception
Tory and reactionary.

* It is a rum state of affairs, don't you think ? ' said
Morris. * But it's the same all round. The intellectuals
are on the wrong side on almost every question that affects
the right understanding of life. They are the priesthood
of the mumbo-jumboism of modern civilisation — Edward
Carpenter is quite right about that. Were I had up for
any sort of crime touching property or political freedom,
I should prefer to take my chance with a jury of dukes and
sporting squires, rather than one of professors and college
dons.'

Reference was made to the fact that the Scottish Univer-
sities had, without exception, at recent parliamentary and
Lord Rectorship elections, elected Unionist politicians who
had no distinction whatever in science or literature

* That just shows you,' said Morris, 'that your intel-
lectuals, dull dogs as they mostly are, have some scent of
what's in the wind, and that when it comes to the pinch they
are more concerned about the preservation of their rotten
class privileges than about the interests of literature and art.
Matthew Arnold was right about the Philistines, being
himself a good bit of that kidney. We'll have to mend or
end what we call education, or it will play the devil with us.
Fancy a Carlylean aristocracy of talent, the country under
the benevolent rule of Senior Wranglers and LL.D's !

102 WILLIAM MORRIS

Or fancy a democracy educated up, or rather down, to the
level of Oxford and Cambridge, as some even of our Socialist
friends would have it ! '

He was reminded that John Ruskin had a year or two
previously contested the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow
University as a Tory Unionist, but had been badly defeated
* But he called himself also the ** reddest of red Communists," '
Morris observed, 'and he deserved to be defeated for his
pranks. But I don't suppose he was defeated because he
called himself a red-hot Communist, or even because he
held heterodox views about Capital and Labour. Your
University folk knew and cared precious little about his views
on these questions, or if they did, I fancy they took those
views more seriously than did the stock-jobbers. He was
defeated, I suspect, simply because he represented to the
generality of the intellectuals what they particularly affect
to esteem — namely Literature and Art — but which they really
don't. Literature and Art are rebellious jades. They
preferred an uninformed political reactionary because,
as I have said, they sniff revolutionary trouble ahead, and
they want to set up as stiff a political guard as they can for
the protection of their class privileges.'

The conversation turned for a bit on his translation
of the Odyssey, and he discussed with MacLaren certain
points in Greek idiom and grammar. Something was said
about a recent attack on Morris by W. E. Henley in one of
the magazines, but Morris dismissed the topic with a con-
temptuous rap at ' Grub Street garbage.'

After lunch I proposed to Morris that we should start
an hour or so earlier than need be for the afternoon meeting,
so as to have time for a look at the Cathedral. This he
agreed to, and our companions having to leave us for engage-
ments of their own, he and I set forth together. I took
him up the old Saltmarket Street (famous in * Rob Roy '),
where he halted every now and then to note some detail
in the now old and shabby relics of the mansions where once
Bailie Nicol Jarvie and the prosperous merchants of the city

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 103

dwelt. These old buildings in the Scottish baronial style
of architecture interested him greatly.

Turning along London Street (why we took this round-
about route, I now forget) we struck down a narrow passage
known as * Shipka Pass,' where, in the window of a quack
doctor's herbal dispensary, were exhibited a ' Wax Venus '
anatomical model and illustrated literature of the Palais
Royal type. There had recently been a good deal of satirical
comment in the London press over the refusal of the Glasgow
Town Council to accept for the Art Gallery a picture with
a nude figure, the ground of their refusal being that the
picture was * indecent.' The unexpected display, therefore,
of pornographical wares in a public thoroughfare in the very
heart of the city rather surprised Morris. I explained to
him, however, that it was one thing for our * unco guid
City Fathers,' as they were sarcastically called by their
London critics, to refuse to accept and exhibit a picture which
they thought objectionable, and another thing for them to
suppress by prosecution a shopkeeper for exhibiting and
selling what he was pleased to describe as * scientific works.'

I did not, however, gather from Morris that he was
wholly on the side of the London press. * There are,' he
said, * some painters who are rum enough coves, and some
paintings that are only fit for monkey-houses.' Meanwhile
a big gaunt labourer, who had been gaping wonder-struck
at the Wax Venus, now kept close by us, eyeing Morris with
stupid curiosity. I suggested to Morris that the fellow
evidently regarded him as the ' Famous Professor and
Specialist,' referred to in the herbalist's window. Much
amused, Morris began telling me a story about a country
bumpkin returning home drunk from a fair. While telling
the story we emerged from the ' Pass ' and were crossing
the Gallowgate, a broad thoroughfare, just as he had reached
the climax of the tale. In the zest of his recital he halted
in the middle of the street, and oblivious to the astonishment
of the passers-by and to my discomfiture, he dramatically
imitated the drunken speech and gestures of the hero of the

104 WILLIAM MORRIS

tale. Visibly scandalised at what they conceived to be the
drunken jollity of a Highland farmer or skipper who had
been visiting some neighbouring * shebeen,' the passers-by
cast reproachful glances at us both. One man, dressed in
his ' Sunday best,' even made steps towards us with the intent,
I could see, of reprimanding my companion for his unseemly
state in a public thoroughfare on the Sabbath day ; but a
forbidding gleam in my eye deterred him. As we were in
a neighbourhood where the Socialist League frequently
held meetings, and where I was likely to be recognised as
' one of those Socialist agitators,' I was glad when we escaped
public attention by turning up the nearest side street. Morris
had not in the least noticed the spectacular interest which he
had aroused, and of course I did not allude to it.

When we arrived at the Cathedral a number of people,
members of the choir perhaps, were passing out. Morris
lingered a few moments in the outlying graveyard, looking
at the inscriptions on the tombstones, and then we made
towards the porch of the southern aisle which was used for
public admission.

We were within a few yards of the doorway when he
stopped abruptly, as if struck by a rifle ball, his eyes fixed
furiously on some object in front of him. As he glared he
seemed to crouch like a lion for a leap at its prey, his whiskers
bristling out. * What the hell is that ? Who the hell has
done that ? ' he shouted, to the amaze, alarm, and indigna-
tion of the people near by.

I looked in the direction of his infuriated gaze, and saw
at once what was the offending object. There it was ; con-
spicuous enough — a sculptured memorial or sarcophagus
in shining white marble jammed into the old grey stone-
work of the aisle, cutting through the string-courses of the
base and projecting up into and completely cutting off a
portion of the window above — in truth an atrocious piece of
vandalism. * What infernal idiot has done that ? ' Morris
again demanded, and heedless of the consternation around
him poured forth a torrent of invective against the unknown

105

perpetrators of the crime. For a moment I thought he
might actually spring upon the excrescence and tear out the
hateful thing with his bare fists. Meanwhile the scandalised
onlookers, believing they were witnessing the distraction
of some unfortunate fellow creature bereft of his reason,
resumed their way, remarking compassionately about him
to one another.

The banging of the heavy studded doors of the porch
by the sexton, closing the Cathedral until the evening service,
arrested his invective. Anxious to divert his attention from
the desecrating tablet, I remarked that we should not now
gain admission into the interior of the Cathedral. * Damn
the interior of the Cathedral ! ' he shouted. ' I've seen
enough of the depredations of your Cathedral blockheads.
Catch me putting my nose into another mess of restoration
botchery.'

Quitting the Cathedral ground, we turned towards the
Necropolis, an eminence now converted into a public
cemetery, which commands a wide view over the city.

Glancing up at the huge mound speckled with glittering
white tombstones and monuments, he remarked on the
circumstance that Christian communities had failed to
make tolerable architectural features of their burial places,
even when, as in Glasgow and so many other towns, the
most prominent and attractive situation had been appropriated
for burying grounds. In Italy, where they had the tradition
of the catacombs and the pantheons, some attempt had been
made to give architectural importance to burial places, par-
ticularly such as were preserves for the interment of rich
and illustrious persons. But, generally speaking, he said,
cemeteries were amongst the most incongruous and posi-
tively unsightly creations of civilised man. The only
burial places that showed even decency of public taste were
some of the old churchyards, where simple stone tablets or
slabs had been made of the same kind of stone as the adjoining
church, which became veiled in a kindly way by the grass or
yew bushes. Yet it was surely possible to devise some sort of

io6 WILLIAM MORRIS

Houses of the Dead, which, while frankly declaring their
purpose, were yet beautiful and impressive as an expression
of religious and communal feeling. The older civilisations,
as we know, attached great importance to their burial places,
making imposing temples of them. But in this, as in so
many other things, individual and family vanity and private
property feeling had completely obstructed the development
of what might have been one of the noblest expressions of
communal feeling.

The John Knox obelisk monument, a large Doric
column surmounted by a statue of the famous reformer,
is the most prominent feature of the Necropolis. I
expected Morris would poke fun at it, but he was only
gently satirical. * He does look as though he were the
Lord of Sabaoth up there, don't he ? Or shall we say,
Shepherd of the Dead ? But he was something of a hero —
and that too despite the fact that Carlyle said so, my friend.
He was, in his own way, a great reformer. He had a big
idea of making the people upright and self-respecting and
intelligent, concerning not only the affairs of the Church
but the public weal — according to his lights. He was not
such a narrow-minded zealot as were so many of your
respected presbyters of later date. You see, Dr. Glasse of
Edinburgh has been coaching me up on your kirk history.
He read me parts of the " Book of Discipline," which I think
most sensible stuff.'

I mentioned that the Jewish burying-ground, which
was situated in the upper corner of the Necropolis, had
inscribed on its gateway the lines from Byron's * Hebrew
Melodies,' beginning :

' Oh, weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,' —

one of the few tributes to the Jewish race in Christian
literature.

Morris, however, showed no desire to see the inscription.
He remarked, * Byron's ** Hebrew Melodies " were a bit
" put on," don't you think ? although there was something

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 107

in the glamour of things Jewish that attracted him. But
I'm not " begrudging " him his sympathy with the Jews.
I'm no Jew-hater. As likely as not I belong to one of the
lost ten tribes.'

* But where are we going ? Why are we here ? ' he
asked, suddenly halting, as we were walking along one of the
cemetery paths.

* Indeed, I do not know,' I replied, and explained that
on finding the Cathedral closed I had taken him for a walk
round. But it was now time, I said, for us to be getting
to the meeting on the Green.

He was much amused. * And so you brought me to a
cemetery by the way of pleasant recreation,' he said with a
twinkle. * I suspect it's in the blood, my boy, and that the
saying about Scotchmen enjoying going to funerals is not a
defamatory one. But after preaching you, as I did a few
minutes ago, a discourse according to the example of my
fellow-countryman, Sir Thomas Browne, on funeral urns,
I had better not heave any more stones at your Scottish taste
for tombstones.'

On the way back, notwithstanding his vexation at the
Cathedral and his ' reflection among the tombs,' he was, as
usual, brimful of pleasantry about the oddity of things he
observed by the way.

Towards the foot of the High Street, the neighbourhood
of which at that period was a congeries of slums, the throng
of children became so dense that we had to thread our way
as through a market crowd. Having almost no room to
play in, the youngsters were inclined to be more noisy and
mischievous in their pranks, and passengers displaying any
peculiarity of appearance rarely escaped their larkish com-
pliments. Morris and myself, with our shock hair, soft
hats, and unconventional make-up, doubtless looked a some-
what outlandish pair, and presented a conspicuous mark
for their jocosity ; and we had to run the gauntlet of a more
than usual fairing of their salutation and mimicry. * Oh,
my, look what's coming ! ' * Hide yer ! ' * Buffalo Bill ! '

io8 WILLIAM MORRIS

' Holy Moses ! ' * Run and lock the park gates, Jamie ! '
and like exclamations heralded our way. Morris with
his grand, elderly, seafaring mien, attracted the brunt of
the waggery. One urchin fronted him with a respectful
gesture. * You'll find one just over the way, sir,' he said
solicitously. * Find what, my little man ? ' asked Morris
unsuspectingly. * A hairdresser, sir ' — and a chime of
laughter greeted the sally, while a little girl seated on the
kerb with an infant in her arms piped out, * Dinna mind
them, mister, they're jist trying tae mak' a fool o' ye.'
A troop of youngsters fell into line behind us, chanting
improvised doggerel: —

* Sailor, sailor ; sou'west !
Dance a jig in the crow's nest ! *

Morris, who was accustomed to the guffaw of juvenile
plebeians in the lower quarters of London, took this sportive-
ness wholly in good part, occasionally returning their banter
con amore, much to the little larrikins' delight. He remarked
on the exceeding cleverness, and often ingenious wit, displayed
by children when in play together, especially in the poorer
districts where they were freer from the tutelage of grown-
ups, and had developed clan or community traditions of
their own. * But the faculty soon withers,' he added;
* the poor things become dull and vacant-minded once they
grow out of childhood and lose the sap of the common stem.
The natural well-springs of their imagination become soiled
and run dry.'

Jail Square, as the wide pavement opening in front of
Glasgow Green is called, is, or was, the most popular public
forum in Scotland, and I suppose in Great Britain. Every
week-night and all Sunday the Square is thronged by groups
of men, mostly of the working class, listening eagerly to
the debates on topics of religion and politics — in those
days chiefly Catholicism versus Protestantism, Calvinism,
Atheism, Spiritualism, Home Rule, Henry Georgeism,
Republicanism, and Socialism. A portion of the space

AS GUEST AND COMPANION 109

close to the railings of the park was by custom reserved for
the speechifying of religious or political propaganda bodies,
stools or chairs being used as platforms.

Morris was greatly taken with the scene. His heart
seemed to warm at the sight of the crowded groups of dis-
putants, as if it recalled to him something of the early folk-
moot and market-place assemblies of which he always wrote
so affectionately. But our time was nearly spent, and I took
him towards the group against the railings where the League
meeting was in full swing. Pete Curran, afterwards
Labour M.P. for Jarrow, was speaking, and recognising
Morris he cut short his speech announcing that the author
of ' The Earthly Paradise ' would now address the meeting —
an announcement that at once caused the crowd to gather in.

Morris mounted the stool and spoke for about twenty
minutes. He referred to the recent Free Speech troubles
in London, and congratulated the working men of Glasgow
on having preserved the right of Free Speech on so large
a scale in the heart of the city. He explained in quite simple
terms the aims of Socialism, avoiding the usual jargon
phrases of the movement. Referring to what he had just
seen of the way in which the children of the poor were pent
up dismally in the slums, he contrasted the ugly and sordid
conditions of the lives of the people generally with what
might be and ought to be in a civilised and wealthy nation
— his allusions alike to the rich and the poor being wholly
untinged with cynicism or insult.

Several questions were put to him, one of which was:
* In one of the evening papers last night you are described
as a rich man. Are you willing to submit to a general
divide of riches ? '

* I am not quite a rich man, as rich men go nowadays,'
replied Morris; * but I am richer than I ought to be compared
with the mass of my fellows ; or rather, perhaps, I shall say
they are poorer than they ought to be. I am more than
willing that my riches, such as they are, should be put into
the common stock of the nation ; and I shall rejoice to

no WILLIAM MORRIS

work for the community, and give it the benefit of whatever
talent or skill I possess, for the same wages that I demand
for, and that the nation could afford to pay, under a proper
economic and moral system, to every workman — dustman,
blacksmith, or bricklayer — in the land.' A big cheer
greeted the reply.

The word having gone round that it was William Morris,
the famous poet, who was addressing the Socialist crowd,
the audience had grown to quite a large one ; but I had now
to hurry him off in order that he might have a cup of tea
before the evening meeting. He was heartily cheered as
he dismounted from the stool. A small contingent of people
followed us a bit of the way, eager to have a better look at
the distinguished and attractive * Poet, Artist, and Socialist.'

The evening meeting was a great success. The
Waterloo Hall was filled with about 800 people, the majority
of whom had paid 6d. and 3^. for admission, and at the con-
clusion of the lecture a resolution in favour of Socialism
was adopted almost unanimously.

As our custom was, we adjourned from the Hall after
the meeting to the branch rooms, where Morris smoked and
talked and sang with us for a goodly hour.

CHAPTER XII

CAMPAIGNING DAY AT HAMMERSMITH

BETWEEN the years 1889 and 1893 I made occasional
week-end visits to Morris at Hammersmith, taking part
in the Sunday propaganda of the local branch. The branch,
which on the break-up of the League in 1 890 changed its
name into the Hammersmith Socialist Society, had its head-
quarters at Kelmscott House, then the most active, as it
was the most famous, centre of Socialist propaganda in
London. An account of a typical week-end spent with
Morris and our Hammersmith comrades will therefore,
I think, be interesting to my readers.

Usually I arrived at Hammersmith from Scotland on
the Saturday afternoon, and passed the evening with Morris
at home. The earlier part of the evening would likely
be spent with Mrs. Morris and Jenny in the drawing-room,
when Morris would read aloud from some favourite book.
Thereafter he and I would sit in the library, where one or
two friends would gather for a chat. Among those likely
to be with us were Emery Walker, John Carruthers, Philip
Webb, Catterson Smith, Cobden-Sanderson, and other
Socialist friends living in the neighbourhood ; occasionally,
after Sunday lectures, other friends from more distant parts
of London might call in.

What rare symposia these little gatherings in the library
were ! Somewhere in the cabinets of my memory a record
of the conversations and discussions has doubtless been
preserved, but only as dried flowers are in the leaves of a

in

ii2 WILLIAM MORRIS

book, their colour faded, their fragrance and essence gone.
In Morris' company conversation could never sink into
banality. His presence inhibited idle and paltry chatter
He was fond of playfulness and humour, but was the deadly
enemy of indolence as of mere levity of mind.

The room itself had a spell for the imagination. One
could not fail to see that some tutelary genius had its abode
in it. Looking around the room, all so charming in the
natural simplicity of its furniture — only useful and beautiful
things were there, masterpieces of literature and priceless
old volumes, Diirer engravings and rare pieces of craftsman-
ship, and all so kindly lit up in the tranquil candle-light
with its ambient shadows — one was conscious of that
companionableness in all about one that one feels in a deep
forest glade. At times the room seemed a very sanctuary
of the Muses or an Abbot's cloister ; but its aspects, like
its master's moods, were many, and seemed to change
responsively. I remember how transfigured it appeared
that night — the Saturday night of the week-end visit which
I am about to describe. Morris was in a particularly
insurgent mood. He had been rating Gladstone and the
Liberal Party, which led someone to remark incautiously
that the Tories were really more in sympathy with liberty
and democracy than the Liberals, citing in support of this
view some dictum of Dr. Johnson's.

Morris was Johnsonian in his reply. He asked what
liberty or democracy the Tories had ever agitated or fought
for ? In the country districts the Tories were on their
own dunghill, and what sort of liberty or democracy had
they given the poor agricultural labourers there ? He
pursued this vein, recalling facts from history and his own
observation, at first in an argumentative way, but gradually
firing himself up into a magnificent polemic against the
aristocracy, the Church, and eventually the whole property-
grabbing class system of modern society. The oppression
of Egypt and Ireland, and the police attack in Trafalgar
Square, he tossed as flaming faggots into his indictment.

CAMPAIGNING AT HAMMERSMITH 113

Amazingly rebellious things took flight in his imagination,
and as I sat there enthralled by the marvel of his words and
his wonderful personality, the room with its antique emblems
seemed to become more and more remote from the outside
world. I remember noticing how the tobacco smoke
from our pipes hung about the ceiling in dim serpent-like
coils, and my enjoying a feeling of mystery and adventure
much as a school-boy might feel in a smuggler's cave or
on a pirate's quarter-deck.

During the last thirty years of his life it was an estab-
lished custom with Morris to breakfast every Sunday morn-
ing with Burne-Jones, when both were in town. This
custom, which was one of his most cherished enjoyments,
and one of the few practices of personal regimen which
did not give way to the urgency of Socialist engagements,
prevented his joining regularly in the Sunday morning
propaganda of the movement. Owing, however, to the
occasional absence from town of Burne-Jones, and to the
fact that Morris often imposed on himself the self-denying
ordinance of shortening his after-breakfast chats with his
friend, there were for several years few Sunday forenoons
that Morris did not take part in the Hammersmith meeting,
or speak in Hyde Park, Victoria Park, or elsewhere in London.

The Sunday morning of my visit was not one of his
Burne-Jones mornings, and he was scheduled as one of the
speakers at Hammersmith Bridge, the favourite Sunday-
morning pitch of the branch. Shortly after ten o'clock
Emery Walker and one or two other members called in, in
order to take with them the literature and banner for the
meeting, and together we all (the callers-in, Morris, May
Morris, and myself) sallied forth for our rendezvous. The
banner of the branch, designed by Crane and worked by
May Morris, was a handsome ensign, and Morris, who, as
we know, was immensely fond of all communal regalia,
bore it furled on its pole over his shoulder — and a fine
banner-bearer he was to see.

It was a glorious morning, and the propaganda strength

1 14 WILLIAM MORRIS

of the branch was well represented at the bridge, among
those present being Morris, May Morris, Mrs. Cobden-
Sanderson, Mrs. Watt, Beasley, Tarleton, Catterson Smith,
Bullock, Bridges Adams, Davies, the Grant brothers,
Tochatti, and Mordhorst.

At least five or six of us spoke. This was more than
usual, and much too many, and Tarleton grumbled that
they ought instead to have divided themselves and held
another meeting elsewhere. As it was, though the speeches
were all, except in one instance, short ones, the meeting
was prolonged beyond the usual hour — i P.M. — with the
result that three-fourths of the audience had melted away
into the neighbouring public-houses, which opened at that
hour, before a collection arranged for that morning could
be taken and a proper opportunity afforded for questions.

The audience at the bridge consisted for the most part of
working-men, who were accustomed to spend an hour or
so on Sunday morning lounging on the bridge before dinner
hour — or public-house time. The majority of them seemed
quite amicably disposed towards the Socialist meeting, but
did not trouble themselves much about politics. Occasionally
one of them would join the branch, an event that was
announced at the next business meeting. There was
not wanting, however, a sufficient spice of opposition on
the part of one or two habitues, men from the Tory-
Democratic camp, who interjected questions and occasionally
insisted on stating their views. One of these — the most
harassing of them, in fact — eventually declared himself
a convert to Socialism and joined the branch — an acquisi-
tion which proved a misfortune in disguise. As an inter-
rupter and opponent this individual excited interest at the
meetings, and gave easy points to our speakers ; but as
an evangelist of Socialism he did not shine. He was so
blundering in his argument, and so obviously disreputable
in his boozing habits, that the branch prayed audibly for his
reconversion to his old anti-Socialist principles and his
return to the Tory fold.

CAMPAIGNING AT HAMMERSMITH 115

The branch at the period I am speaking of was in great
propaganda fettle, and in addition to the usual morning
meeting, and an early evening meeting at Walham Green
or elsewhere, and the usual indoor evening lecture in the
hall, a few of the more ardent propagandists were running
a special series of afternoon meetings in Ravenscourt Park.
Morris was not asked to take part in this supplementary
mission of the branch, his comrades realising the claims which
the editing of Commonweal and his own literary work
had upon his time.

Together with Bullock, the Grants, Tochatti, and others,
I took part in holding the meeting in the park, where we
succeeded in gathering a big crowd, mostly of the better-
to-do office and shop-keeping class. It was a capital
audience to speak to, with its provoking air of respectability,
but I doubt if much was achieved in the way of * making
Socialists ' among them. They were, I fear, exceedingly
stony ground. But, anyway, we were spreading the word.

Later in the afternoon, previous to our going to the
evening meeting at Walham Green, Bernard Shaw had
called in on his way to some special Fabian committee,
which was to be held at May Morris' house farther along
the riverside at Hammersmith Terrace. This was the first
time I had met Shaw. Morris, I remember, was showing
Hooper, Walker and myself proofs of initial letters printed
in red for his Kelmscott Press, asking whether we liked the
colour. Hooper and Walker expressed themselves pleased
with it, but, feeling myself technically incompetent on such
a matter, I ventured no remarks. On Shaw's entering,
Morris asked his opinion. Examining the print for a moment,
Shaw said that he thought the colour a little too light —
too yellowish, I think he said. Morris looked at the print
again, holding it at various distances from his eyes. ' Umph !
Perhaps you may be right,' he said. * I'll have proofs
pulled to-morrow in a deeper tint, and see how it looks.*

On rising to go, Shaw said to me, * You are lecturing
to-night. I should like to hear you, but I expect our

n6 WILLIAM MORRIS

committee meeting will keep me rather late. Of course,
I know that you have some sensible things to say, but are
you going to say anything fresh — heretical, I mean ? If so,
I shall make an effort to come ; but if you are going to keep
on the beaten track, it's hardly worth my while, is it ? '
I replied with conventional modesty that I did not suppose
that anything I had to say was likely to be either new or
particularly heretical to him. * Ah well,' he said, * you
won't mind if I postpone the pleasure of hearing your
Scottish wit and wisdom till another occasion,' and with
that he made off. This was the first time I had met Shaw,
and the bluntness of his civility was a novel experience.
As a matter of fact, he was the only person besides Morris
likely to be at the meeting whose opinion on the argument
of my lecture I should specially have liked to hear. His
announcement, therefore, that he would not be present, was
a disappointment to me, none the less so because he had made
me unwittingly accessory to his absence.

In the evening Morris accompanied us to Walham
Green, where he, Catterson Smith, Bullock, and myself
addressed a fair-sized crowd of people of the artisan type,
who seemed to take quite an intelligent interest in the
speeches. Here, as at Hammersmith Bridge, Morris
vigorously pushed the sale of literature while the other
speakers were holding forth, going round the ring with a
bundle of Commonweals and pamphlets under his arm,
and inviting the listeners in a brotherly way to sample some
of his wares. Sometimes a listener would seem to hesitate
about parting with a penny for a purchase, whereupon
Morris would say, * Well, my friend, never mind about
payment. I'll stand that if you'll promise to read the
paper. You can hand it on to someone else when you're
done with it.'

Morris and I hurried back early from the meeting, as
I was due to lecture in the hall at eight o'clock, and he
was to take the chair.

The famous meeting-room was an out-building attached

CAMPAIGNING AT HAMMERSMITH 117

to the side of Kelmscott House — the house itself having,
previous to Morris' tenancy, been the residence of Dr.
George Mac Donald, the celebrated story writer and
mystic, and before that of Sir Francis Rolands, the inventor
of the electric telegraph. The outhouse was originally a
stable, but was turned by Morris into a carpet- weaving and
designing room, and later he had it fitted up as a meeting-
place for the Hammersmith Socialists. It was a long room,
with the floor raised three steps at the further end, forming
a dais or platform with a side door leading into the garden
of the house. It was quite simply furnished, and visitors
who expected, as it seems many did, to find it fitted up as
a sort of Morris art show-room were disappointed with its
severely utilitarian character. The furniture consisted of
rush-bottom chairs and several long wooden forms, a lecture
table on the platform, and a bookstall near the entrance.
The plain whitewashed walls were covered with rush
matting. One or two engravings, portraits of Sir Thomas
More and other Socialist pioneers, and copies of Walter
Crane's famous Socialist cartoons were hung on either side
of the room. The banner of the branch was displayed
behind the platform, on which there were a piano and some
copies of Roman mosaics.

The fame of Morris brought visitors — literary men,
artists, politicians, and Socialists — almost every Sunday
evening to the meetings. Many distinguished people from
America and foreign countries had heard Socialism preached
here for the first time in their lives. Almost every notable
Socialist speaker, irrespective of party, had spoken from its
platform, some of them many times. Among the list might
be mentioned Kropotkin, Stepniak, Lawrence Gronlund,
Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Mrs. Webb, Graham Wallas,
Mrs. Besant, Sydney Olivier, Hyndman, Herbert Burrows,
J. A. Hobson, John Burns, Pete Curran, John Carruthers,
Walter Crane, Philip Webb, Cobden-Sanderson and Ramsay
Macdonald. Morris and Shaw, however, were the most
frequent lecturers — above all, Morris himself.

n8 WILLIAM MORRIS

When not engaged lecturing elsewhere, Morris waa
always present, and was usually called upon to preside, and
liked to do so. But, whether in the chair or not, Morris
invariably took part in the after discussion. It was also
his custom when at home to invite the lecturer of the even-
ing, together with one or two friends, to supper after the
meeting. To be asked to these supper gatherings was
a coveted privilege, and with his usual consideration
Morris was careful to invite, as occasion allowed, one
or two of the least prominent members of the branch, so
that none was denied the honqyr and hospitality of his
table.

The subject of my lecture was ' Social and Physical
Equality.' I had taken great pains in preparing the notes,
writing out part of the lecture in full, alike because I felt
it was incumbent on me to sustain as best I could the reputa-
tion of the Kelmscott House platform, and because the
subject was one which I thought would, if well handled,
be of interest to the more thoughtful Socialists among my
hearers.

It was, I confess, a notable event for me to lecture at
Kelmscott House with Morris in the chair.

The main argument of my lecture was (i) that equality
of social conditions would inevitably tend towards greater
equality of bodily and mental powers, and (2) that this
greater equality of physical powers as well as of social con-
ditions would operate to increase the nobler diversity of
character and multiply the means of happiness in life, by
eliminating the violent, ugly, and hateful contrasts, not only
of wealth and poverty, but of health and disease, strength
and weakness, ability and stupidity, and beauty and ugliness
in the human race. Diversity resulting from defect of
mind or body was not and could not be a source of beauty
or happiness to any but depraved minds. It was one of
Morris' habits when presiding at meetings to murmur
assent or disapproval at what was being said, keeping his
hand meanwhile employed drawing bits of ornament,

CAMPAIGNING AT HAMMERSMITH 119

sprays of foliage, initial letters and such-like, and using for
the purpose the backs of envelopes, blotting-paper, handbills,
or any scrap of paper that lay at hand. On this occasion
he * illuminated ' several envelopes while I was speaking
— one of which I have preserved — and commented freely,
mostly in monosyllables, on my statements. His expres-
sions were for the most part favourable, chiefly emphasis
of approval ; but I none the less felt unusually ill at ease
when speaking, and often had difficulty in finding the right
word. In particular I remember that I stumbled into the
frequent use of the word * predicates ' as a verb, in the sense
of ' implies ' or ' involves' as a consequence (a piece of scientific
jargon I had learnt from Spencer, I think). Morris visibly
squirmed every time I used the word, but, try as I would
to avoid it, the offensive Latinism obtruded itself at every
opportunity.

He was on his feet inviting questions almost before I
sat down. They came pell-mell, but most of them were
irrelevant, and Morris promptly told the questioners con-
cerned that they were so. Discussion followed. Among
the first to speak was a young lady sitting near the back of
the hall (who, I afterwards learned, was quite a stranger).
She was evidently in a state of nervous excitement, and
spoke so low that we on the platform only ascertained what
she had said after the meeting was over. It appears that
she expostulated — ' Oh, Mr. Morris, don't you think it
is wrong in a man of your great talents and influence to be
engaged in leading these young men astray — astray from
God's truth — into the dangerous paths of Atheism and
revolution ? ' Adding a few more words of religious appeal,
she sat down, but immediately afterwards rose and hastened
from the room like an affrighted spirit — poor girl ! It is a
pity Morris did not hear what she said. His reply would,
we may be sure, have quietened if not banished her fears,
and maybe have lessened the distress of her soul, evidently
deeply sincere, by giving her a juster thought of the ways
alike of God and her Socialist fellowmen.

120 WILLIAM MORRIS

The discussion, like the questions, was very discursive.
The usual * cranks ' had their usual say — each dilating on
his own particular theme. Tochatti, an Anarchist tailor
from Glasgow, discoursed on the advantages of Anarchism
over State Socialism, inasmuch as Anarchism would allow
the free play of all our human faculties without artificial
hindrances of any kind. This observation brought to his
feet Mordhorst, a Danish Socialist, who insisted that it
was not less law but more law that we needed — law that
would sternly put down landlordism, sweating, and all
other abominations of the existing Capitalist system. He
was followed by Munsey, a postal telegraphic official, a
very earnest worker in the branch, who complained that
the lectures were becoming too learned and far-fetched for
useful Socialist teaching. What was wanted was plain
statements of Socialist economics, such as a workman
could understand. The subject discussed by the lecturer
was, he said, no doubt interesting, but it did not concern
Socialists much at present. What we had to do was to
get the workers organised for Socialism. The Social
Revolution depended solely on the working class. ' Who
would be free, themselves must strike the blow.'

These familiar free-lances, having fired their shafts,
the discussion was continued by several speakers who took
up the theme of the lecture, and made some instructive
points of criticism. Morris himself, in concluding the
debate, which he had listened to with much more patience
than I had expected, said he had greatly enjoyed the lecture.
Many of the ideas in it were fresh and interesting to him.
He heartily agreed that all diversities of body and mind
which implied suffering, inferiority, or incapacity of any
kind for the service or enjoyment of life, were hateful.
No right-thinking person could derive pleasure or pride
from beholding among their fellows the lack of capacity for
giving happiness to others, any more than the lack of means
of obtaining happiness for themselves. Yet these were the
chief diversities that life afforded to-day

CAMPAIGNING AT HAMMERSMITH 121

At supper-table after the meeting the subject of in-
tellectual and physical equality was taken up again, and
we listened to highly interesting accounts of the difference of
capacity amongst the races in South America from John
Carruthers, who as a railway engineer and contractor had
great experience of the industrial habits of the people in
that part of the world. It was midnight when Morris
wished his guests * good-night ' cheerily at the door.

Such was one Sunday's campaigning at Hammersmith.
* You must feel jolly tired — I do,' said Morris, as he showed
me upstairs to bed, candle in hand. * Making Socialists
is rather a stiff sort of art work, don't you think ? '

CHAPTER XIII

LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE

WHEN in 1888 at the Whitsunday Annual Conference of
the League the parliamentarian faction were decisively
out-voted and asked to withdraw from the Party, there
was for the moment a general expectation among the victors
that the troubles within the League were over, and that
its work would now proceed unimpeded by internal strife.
Morris, however, was far from hopeful of that result. He
knew the movement both in London and in the Provinces
better than anyone else did, and he was too quick of eye
not to discern the new peril of the situation. Returning
that evening from the Conference to Hammersmith he
remarked to me rather gloomily, * We have got rid of the
parliamentarians, and now our anarchist friends will want
to drive the team. However, we have the Council and
the Commonweal safe with us for at least a twelve-month,
and that is something to be thankful for.'

This uneasy feeling about what had occurred was often
expressed by Morris during my visit. There was, he said,
something unnatural in casting out comrades who, however
perverse in their methods, wished to remain banded with
us. It didn't feel Socialist-like. Had their object been to
break away from the League, as indeed in consistency to
their principles they ought to have done, the position would
have been quite different. Besides, he felt within himself
that should it ever come to a choice with him between
having to rank himself on the side of parliamentarianism

122

LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 123

or on the side of anarchism, he would unhesitatingly
choose the former.

Morris' apprehensions about anarchism were deep and
instinctive. He dreaded the doctrine all the more because
he agreed with Anarchists in a great measure in their general
affirmation of freedom, and in their belief in voluntary as
opposed to compulsory co-operation. But their denial of
social authority and discipline, their strong assertion of
individual rather than of social rights, their emphasis of the
sovereignty or autonomy of the individual, and their constant
tendency to view society as the enemy instead of the friend
of man, and, while declaring men to be on the whole indi-
vidually good and trustworthy, at the same time ceaselessly
to rail against organised society as inherently wicked and
tyrannical, were notions alien alike to his temperament
and his reason. He had no patience with the idea that
men, apart from the environment of society — its education,
customs, and co-operation — were naturally unselfish, amiable,
or God-like creatures ; nor that ' free ' from organised
society they could attain any human eminence or happiness
Neither the * freedom ' of Rousseau's * Man in a State of
Nature,' nor that of Thoreau's * Solitude in the Woods,'
appealed to him. He saw that all things that pleased him
in life — work, art, literature, fellowship, civic courage
and social custom — were the outcome of men associating
with, not of men separating themselves from, their fellows,
either in work or woe.

In fine, he was a Socialist, not an Anarchist. He believed
that man was a social being whose welfare depended on the
welfare of Society and on his sharing in its common rights
and freedom, not on his striving to assert his own separate
powers or inclinations.

Nevertheless, Morris liked many of the Anarchists
personally. He shared, as I have said, their desire for
freedom as against all class or arbitrary rule. In many
ways, too, he shared with men like Edward Carpenter and
Bernard Shaw their disregard of habits and conventions

124 WILLIAM MORRIS

that belonged to obsolete social or religious systems and
prevented the freer growth of individual initiative and
variety in life. Nor had he hitherto found much difficulty
in working with Anarchists on a common platform. He
had often addressed meetings with Kropotkin (and to the
last remained his personal friend), with Mrs. C. M. Wilson,
Louise Michel, and other pronounced Anarchists, and
several of his colleagues in the Council of the League were
decidedly Anarchist in their views. It had indeed been
easier on the whole for him to get on with the Anarchists
than with the parliamentarians, for the simple reason that
the matter of parliamentary policy was involved in almost
every practical question that arose, whereas Anarchism as
a practical system was, or seemed to be, a question of the
far future.

But already it was becoming evident to him and to other
of the more observant members of the League in London
and in the Provinces, that Anarchism was no longer an
abstract theory merely. The Anarchist idea was gaining
more and more adherents in the Party ; and with their
growth in numbers they were becoming increasingly bold
in their efforts to apply their principles both within and
without the organisation.

There was, in fact, a sort of current of Anarchism
rising in the Socialist Movement — a current which a year
or two later threatened to carry away with it a large part
of the more active propagandists.

It was difficult just then to account for this circumstance.
There appeared to be something mysterious in its origin
and mode of diffusion. It was hardly to be ascribed to
any circumstance in the political or industrial situation of
the time. It was rather a reaction of influences within the
Movement itself. Nowhere did Anarchism spring up spon-
taneously, so to speak, in the country, as Socialism so often
did. It grew and spread only within the Socialist Movement^
parasitically in the branches — a fact which accords with general
experience of Anarchist propaganda in other countries.

LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 125

Men are often what is described as ' born Socialists ' —
born, that is to say, with altruistic natures, abhorrent of all
social wrong, and with minds easily attracted by Utopian
ideas. Men are also often enough ' born individualists ' —
wholly obsessed, that is to say, with their own self-interests
and desires. Men are never * born Anarchists.' Anar-
chism is not an innate predisposition in man ; it is an
acquired state of mind, and a very unstable one usually.
The Anarchist is either a Socialist who has got muddled
with individualist ideas, or an individualist who has got
muddled with Socialist ideas.

Undoubtedly the presence in the movement of a large
element of foreign refugees, particularly from Russia and
Poland and Spain, afforded Anarchism a stimulating soil
for growth. These exiles, bred under Tsarist despotism,
knowing government only as a machine of oppression,
and possessing no attachment to British traditions of con-
stitutional liberty, and often failing to acquire any deep
sense of civic responsibility, were naturally disposed to
favour ' autonomist ' and insurrectionary ideas. It was
amongst these people also that the police agents of foreign
governments were for ever prowling for their victims.

And here, as events proved, we are near to the main
source of the * propaganda by deed ' excitement which, under
the name of Anarchism, so widely infected the movement
at that period. That this Anarchist propaganda was
organised and stimulated by police spies and agents provo-
cateurs^ admits of no doubt. The subsequent tragic in-
cidents of the Walsall Anarchist bomb plot, and the reve-
lations that then and afterwards ensued, especially in
connection with the notorious Coulon, proved that for
years the police had been at work devising Anarchist plots
and inveigling dupes into their criminal net.

The Socialist League was, of course, particularly
vulnerable to Anarchist propaganda, because of its avowedly
revolutionary aims, and anti-parliamentary policy. Many
of its members found it difficult to draw the line dearly

126 WILLIAM MORRIS

between the League principles and Anarchism, just as on
the other hand many Fabians found no obstacle to their
supporting Liberalism in opposition to Labour. Even
Morris himself, clear as he was in his own mind as to the
fundamental distinction and opposition of the two philo-
sophies, could not always in precept or in practice separate
them. Especially was this the case when dealing with
his immediate associates at the headquarters of the League,
some of whom he personally liked though disapproving
their autonomist views and inflammatory utterances. The
consequence was that already at the headquarters, as well
as in some of the branches, Anarchistic ways of a disquieting
nature were beginning to establish themselves.

The Anarchistic emphasis on no rules, no censorship,
no * bourgeois ' morality, was, in fact, beginning to sap
the stamina of certain of the branches and clubs ; and a
tendency was noticeable, not only of a lapsing from Socialist
principles, but from moral standards. An affected bravado
of ' do as you please and damn public opinion ' was accepted
as a substitute for any declaration or witness of Socialist
conviction ; and the specious catchword * propaganda by
deed,' which was beginning to allure some of the more
earnest members from the drudgery of holding public
meetings into dalliance with revolutionary heroics, was not
always interpreted in a political sense. The Autonomie
Club, becoming bolder and bolder, were about to issue
a few years later (1894) leaflets entitled 'Vive le Vol *
(' Long live 'Theft '), and even to justify theft not only
on the part of the poor from the rich, but by comrades from
comrades.

It was the apprehension aroused by these personal
bizarre extravagances, more than their mere political intran-
sigence, that vexed and repelled Morris. Strongly opposed
as he was to the diversion of Socialist propaganda from
its real object, ' the making of Socialists,' into attempts to
excite insurrections that would only lead to fruitless blood-

LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 127

shed, and head the nation back to sheer reaction, he was
not really alarmed on that score. There was, he knew, not
the least likelihood of the Anarchists succeeding in arousing
any proletarian insurrection in this country. But he saw
clearly that their present course must inevitably end in
tragic consequences to some of themselves or to their dupes
at the hands of the police, and that meanwhile their conduct
was calculated to demoralise the movement, destroy the
tradition, and deface the ideals of the Socialist cause.

Not that Morris desired that Socialism or Socialists
should approve themselves to what is termed the noncon-
formist conscience. But he wished Socialism to approve
itself to earnest-minded Socialists themselves, and to all
good-hearted and right-headed men and women. He
often said of himself that he was not a puritan ; and in the
customary or scoffing sense of the word he assuredly was
not But there was a sense in which it might be said of him
that not only was he a puritan, but a puritan of the puritans.
No man was more repelled by, or more sternly disapproved
unsocial conduct, or actions that he regarded as dishonour-
able, base, ugly, or cruel. He had, it is true, no liking for
asceticism, dinginess, or mere straitlacedness of any kind.
Merry-making and jollity were after his own heart, and one
of the constant affirmations in his writings was that only
under Socialism could real merriment and joy in life abound.
But feasting and mirth must be won by work and diligence
in the needful duties of life ; it must not be taken by idleness
and thoughtless self-indulgence. With Bohemianism as a
cult, or the bravado of hedonism, he had no sympathy
whatever. Debauchery, blackguardism, idleness, and loose-
ness of life he abominated, as greatly as he admired George
Borrow, and revelled in ' Pickwick ' and the fun and
mischief of ' Huckleberry Finn,' precisely because they
were expressions of strong, resourceful, or good-natured
character, and protests against humdrum ways of life.

The men, as I have said, with whom Morris was most

128 WILLIAM MORRIS

closely associated in the official work of the League at that
time were Joe Lane, Frank Kitz, and David J. Nicol.
Lane was co-trustee with Morris of the Commonweal,
Nicol was sub-editor, and Kitz was Secretary of the
League.

Lane I hardly knew personally, having only met him
once or twice at conferences. He was an intensely
earnest man, but as I gathered, of a rather narrow, doc-
trinaire mind, who perpetually worried himself and others
with his pet dogma — the iniquity of the State, and the
necessity of the complete abolition of all political government.
Nevertheless Morris had much respect for him.

Frank Kitz was of a wholly different mould. He was
a dyer by trade, and had sometimes been employed by Morris
at his Merton Abbey works. He was, I always understood,
a fairly competent workman, but irregular in his habits.
A sturdily made, bluff, breezy chap, fond of his beer and
jolly company, and with something of originality in his
composition, Morris liked him for a time and forgave
him a thousand faults. There was a rough humour and
wit in him, and a sort of perverse ingenuity of ideas, and
bold aptness of phrase which made his talk and his public
speaking attractive to the crowd. He was a rebel by
temperament rather than Anarchist by philosophy. He
was out for the social revolution rather than for Socialism,
Communism or Anarchism. What precisely his idea of
the social revolution was he never perhaps made quite
clear.

In the pages of To-Day Bernard Shaw, who, like Morris,
was attracted by Kitz's unconventional characteristics,
devoted two amusing articles to a good-humoured sally on
Kitz's revolutionary bluster.

David Nicol was yet another type. Possessed of a good
education, and originally of some moderate means, he was
drawn into the movement by his idealist tendencies. He
had some literary gift, and one or two of his songs, such as the
' Workers' Marseillaise ' and ' The Coming of the Light,'

LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 129

have a glow of poetic fire in them. Kindly and gentle
by nature, there was a strain of weakness in him mentally.
He steeped his mind in clandestine literature, especially
that dealing with the homicidal details of Government
oppression and popular revolt, and became obsessed with
the notion of arousing an insurrectionary working-class
struggle in this country.

It was mainly into the hands of these three men, together
with Charles Mowbray, whose whole Socialist career fell
afterwards into disrepute as one who was at least the tool
of police agents, that the control of the Common-weal and
the League passed, when Morris and the Hammersmith
branch broke off from the League. The result was
inevitable.

There were still, it is true, a few members of the
Anarchist-Communist type who gave no countenance to
these eccentricities, but their example and reproof were
alike disregarded. Morris showed all along, as we have
seen, astonishing forbearance to his erring comrades.
Even when they succeeded in capturing, as they did at
the Annual Conference in 1889, the Council of the League,
and he resigned from it and from the editorship of the
Commonweal, he continued for many months to meet
the deficit in the treasury to the tune of several hundred
pounds. Eventually, however, the position became unen-
durable, and he cut off all supplies. Before doing so he
discharged the debt of the paper and the League, leaving
his comrades with not a penny of past debt to burden them.
The League and the Commonweal between them exacted
a tribute from him in donations and debt payments of at
least £500 a year.

The after-history of the League is briefly told. The
majority of the provincial branches, disagreeing with the
Anarchist policy, ceased to send affiliation fees. The
Commonweal became a monthly instead of a weekly
pucatbliion, and an avowed organ of Anarchism. Police
spies and agents provocateurs played their accustomed part.

i3o WILLIAM MORRIS

Nicol, the editor of the Commonweal, got imprisoned
for a seditious article, and later came the Walsall Anarchist
Plot, which led to Fred Charles, Joe Deakin, and two
others getting long terms of penal servitude. The chief
instrument of this plot was Coulon, a spy in the pay of the
French Government.

To this strangely inglorious and tragic end came the
Socialist League, founded and inspired by the teaching,
and made glorious by the genius of one of the most gifted
of the sons of men.

CHAPTER XIV

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS

MY visits to Morris at Hammersmith had incidentally an
interesting result in my own family circle. Among the more
active members of the Hammersmith branch was Sam Bullock,
the lecture secretary, between whom and myself grew up
a close friendship. Bullock's business as a consulting
engineer caused him to make frequent journeys to Scotland,
in the course of which he usually visited me in Glasgow.
This led eventually to his engagement and marriage to
my sister Kitty in 1893, whose home henceforth was at
Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith. Sam Bullock and my
sister were often guests at Morris' Sunday evening
supper parties. Sam had a humorous vein which Morris
relished.

Meanwhile my own marriage, which took place at the
same period, led to an abrupt change in the way of my life.
My wife being as myself, we resolved to devote ourselves
wholly to the work of the movement, setting forth together
on our lifelong twain career as itinerant Socialist agitators.
Our lecturing engagements henceforth led us both to make
frequent visits to London, where my sister's home at Ham-
mersmith became our headquarters. Thus a double link
of attachment was now formed between the Hammersmith
Socialist Society and myself.

Our first visit to Hammersmith after our marriage
was during our honeymoon early in July 1893, when I
introduced my wife to Morris, and received his benediction.

i32 WILLIAM MORRIS

We were both booked to lecture at Kelmscott House,
myself on the first Sunday of our visit, and my wife on the
following Sunday. Though it was midsummer, and indoor
meetings were hardly inviting, there was a crowded audience
to hear my wife speak for the first time in the famous little
hall. Morris himself postponed his going away to his
country house at Kelmscott expressly to preside at the
meeting, and made some warm-hearted remarks when
introducing her to the gathering, congratulating both the
movement and ourselves on our ' apostolic wedding.'

A rather droll incident occurred during the lecture.
Among those seated with Morris on the platform was the
venerable E. T. Craig, famous as one of the pioneers of
the Co-operative Movement, and as the founder of the
remarkable Ralahine Co-operative Colony in Ireland, which
after a few years of extraordinary success came to grief
owing to the bankruptcy and ruin of the proprietor of the
land.

Mr. Craig was now over ninety years of age, and though
frail in body was extraordinarily alert in mind, and full
of enthusiasm for the new Socialist movement. His queer
little cramped-up figure as he sat on the platform with a
grey Scottish shepherd's plaid round his shoulders, contrasted
drolly with the burly form of Morris, who, despite several
warning turns of illness, still looked in the height of health
and energy.

Unfortunately, Craig was exceedingly deaf, and had
to make use of a huge ear-trumpet. The better to hear
my wife he planted his chair close by her on the right, and
held the unwieldy-looking instrument almost up to her
face when she was speaking, much to her embarrassment.
My wife, who has always claimed for herself considerable
freedom of action on the platform, was obliged therefore
severely to restrain her customary gestures, as no one present
could fail to observe. Imagine, therefore, the amusement
of the meeting when at the conclusion of her address, the
quaint old veteran sprang to his feet and while compli-

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS 133

menting the lecturer most gallantly on her address, expressed
his great disappointment that she had not put * more vigorous
action into it.' ' I always like,' exclaimed he, ' to see orators,
especially when they are young and full of life like our
lecturer, throw their arms well about,' and in order to
illustrate his idea, he swung his own arm, brandishing the
ear-trumpet in a great sweep round him, so that both my
wife and Morris had to throw themselves hastily back to
avoid being struck by the weapon.

The subject of my wife's lecture was * The Dearth of
Joy,' and though I knew the lecture was one which Morris
was likely to approve, I had a moment's misgiving over
one of the passages in it. In the course of her remarks
she alluded to certain signs of a growing moral and intel-
lectual enfeeblement in literature and art, and instanced in
contrast with the sorrows of the workers the exaggeration
of merely aesthetic griefs and pains on the part of some of
our modern poets and artists, mentioning Rossetti as an
example. This allusion was not, I knew, prompted in
any way by the circumstances of the meeting, as I had heard
her make the same reference when delivering the lecture
elsewhere. Knowing, however, as I did, Morris' sensi-
tiveness about anything that seemed in the nature of dis-
paragement of the Pre-Raphaelites, and remembering the
consequences of an unfortunate remark of my own about
Burne-Jones, of which I have spoken in a previous chapter,
I felt a bit concerned lest Morris should take umbrage at
her stricture on Rossetti.

My apprehension, however, proved a false alarm. So
far from dissenting from her observation, Morris in his
few concluding remarks expressed his entire accordance
with her. * I quite agree with the lecturer,' he said. * We
have surely enough very real and very terrible woes in modern
life to evoke our sympathy and lamentation, without make-
believing any fanciful ones. Those I am sure who have
themselves experienced, or who have any knowledge what-
ever of such suffering as that endured by the poor miners

134 WILLIAM MORRIS

and their families during the recent lock-out, and who
know what it is to see " little ones cry for bread " when
bread for them there is none, are not likely to have much
patience with poets who moan and melodise about their
broken hearts (which, of course, are never broken) and
the imaginary slights of their sweethearts or mistresses,
especially when, as in so many instances, the sweethearts
and mistresses are as fanciful creatures as the supposed
heart-breaks.'

After the meeting Morris took us to supper — the com-
pany including my sister and brother-in-law, Sam Bullock,
Philip Webb, Andreas Scheu, and several others. Morris
(I may be pardoned the vanity of noting) was most attentive
towards my wife, talking with her about her college and
propaganda experiences. Recollecting that the decorations
and furnishings of her college (Newnham) had been the
work of the Morris Company, he inquired about their
state of preservation, and was pleased to hear that they
had proved durable and were appreciated by the students.
He was greatly interested when he discovered that she had
been brought up at Walthamstow, where he himself had
been born, and inquired about some of the folk he remem-
bered there, particularly a vehement old character, Farmer
Hitchman.

Next day we came round at his request to see him for
an hour in his study, when he showed my wife some of his
literary treasures, and gave us as a wedding token a copy
of one of his Kelmscott Press books in vellum, inscribed
with our names.

Morris was now entering upon the closing period of
his life, of which only three years were yet to run. His
career as an active worker in the Socialist movement was
already virtually over. He had but recently given no little
time and much earnest thought to the project of trying
by means of a joint Socialist Committee to bring about

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS 135

formal unity between the different sections of the move-
ment. This Committee, which comprised delegates from
the S.D.F., the Fabian Society, and the Hammersmith
Socialist Society, and included, among others, Hyndman,
Quelch, Shaw, Webb, Walter Crane, and Morris, after
weeks of discussion drew up a united Socialist manifesto ;
but no practical result, however, came of it. Morris was
greatly disappointed over the business. Though he never
had much hopes of, or indeed belief in, what was termed
* Socialist Unity,' this further experience of factional pre-
judice and fruitless effort in connection with the mere
mechanism of Socialist organisation, following upon the
break-up of the League, was very discouraging to him.
It closed up the only prospect then visible to him of forming
a great Socialist Party with broad but definite and inspiring
Socialist aims. True there was the new political Labour
movement in which Socialists and Trade Unionists were
combined, of which the recently formed Independent Labour
Party (the I.L.P.) was the chief expression — but this move-
ment, operating, as it did, mainly in the North, hardly came
within his view in London. He was not in touch with
its leaders, nor did he quite understand its Socialist position.
His friends of the Social Democratic Federation had no
good word to say of it, and his Fabian friends were hardly
more sympathetic in their attitude towards it. What
appeared to be its intensely electioneering character repelled
him, though later on he came to form a more favourable
and just opinion of its principles and objects.

Thus he felt isolated from the general throng of Socialist
factions and forced back into his own idealist world,
his still almost undiminished creative energies finding scope
during this period of declining bodily vigour in his new
printing schemes for the Kelmscott Press and in the writing
of his splendid prose romances. To the last, however, he
preserved his connection with the Hammersmith Socialist
Society, keeping unbroken his comradeship with his old
friends, and occasionally, as far as the state of his health

136 WILLIAM MORRIS

would allow, lecturing at Hammersmith and elsewhere in
London and in provincial towns.

***** *

One of his last links with the active propaganda of the
movement was formed by the publication of the Hammer-
smith Socialist Record, a little monthly magazine, or rather
tract, issued by the Hammersmith Socialist Society. The
Record was begun shortly after Morris and the Society
ceased their connection with the League and the Common-
weal, as a means of voicing the distinctive Socialist
views of the Society; and its trim little pages continued
to receive articles and notes from his pen till its expiry
in 1 895. It was, I should think, entitled to the distinction
of being the smallest and most homely Socialist publication
in the country. Morris and myself were, as the editor,
Sam Bullock, drolly put it, the ' chief contributors ' and
sometimes the only ones, and it is pleasant to me to think
that I was privileged by means of this little publication
to collaborate with Morris in the forlorn journalism of
Socialist propaganda, even ' unto this last.'

***** *

The last occasion on which I met Morris was in August
1895, about a year before his death. My wife and I were
on a visit to my sister and brother-in law at Hammersmith.
We all four attended the Sunday evening meeting at Kelms-
cott House — Herbert Burrows being the lecturer on that
occasion — and had a merry supper afterwards. Morris
asked me to come round next morning for a chat, inviting
my wife to join us later for lunch.

Morris had then but recently recovered from the most
serious illness of his life, and was noticeably weak and out
of trim. He only briefly alluded to his illness, however,
and that, as I thought, in a spirit of humbleness. He
wanted, he said, to talk to me about the movement, especially
in the North. Did I think it was making progress ? What
did I think about the I.L.P. ? Was it aiming genuinely

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS 137

for Socialism ? I answered his questions reassuringly,
explaining how that my wife and I were now putting our
whole energy into the new party, the I.L.P., and frankly
avowing that I had abandoned my old Socialist League
opinions against parliamentary action. He listened to my
apologia attentively, sitting back in his chair smoking,
keeping his eyes fixed on me reflectively while I spoke.
He told me, what doubtless, he said, I had gathered from
his more recent letters to me, that he himself had now realised
that revolutionary Socialism was impossible in England —
the working class were too deeply attached by temperament
as well as by tradition to compromise and progressive politics
to pursue with any genuine zeal abstract principles or
revolutionary methods of change. Perhaps they were
wiser than we were, even if their wisdom was only what
Grant Allen called * animal instinct.' Animal instinct
was quite as likely to be right as armchair philosophy.
Anyway they knew their own capacities better than we
did. He had, he said, resumed friendly relations with the
leaders of the S.D.F., but he still disliked much of their
spirit and many of their political methods. He asked me
about' Keir Hardie, and was manifestly pleased to hear me
speak warmly and trustfully of him. ' I have had, I confess,
rather my doubts about him,' he said, * because of his seeming
absorption in mere electioneering schemes, but his fight for
the unemployed has had something great in it.'

He spoke also of Robert Blatchford, whose extra-
ordinary popularity as a journalist and as the author
of * Merrie England * and editor of The Clarion was
then uprising. He had heard, he said, a good deal about
the remarkable influence of Blatchford's writings among
the factory workers in the North. That, he thought, was
a most encouraging sign, for he seemed to have a true grip
of Socialism, and appeared to possess the faculty of under-
standing the mind of the working class and of being
understood by them. He (Blatchford) had been to see him
at Kelmscott House, and they had had an interesting talk

138 WILLIAM MORRIS

together, though Blatchford seemed rather a taciturn man.
' He is a queerish, black-looking chap,' Morris remarked.
' But I'm not sure he came quite out of his shell.'

He inquired about what our old League comrades in
Scotland were doing, the Rev. Dr. Glasse, John Gilray,
and others in Edinburgh, Webster, Leatham in Aberdeen,
and Muirhead, Joe Burgoyne, Sandy Haddow, Dr. Stirling
Robertson, and others in Glasgow. I was struck with
the distinctness which these far-away and but seldom seen
comrades had in his mind.

He showed me, I remember, a letter in MS. he had
written to the Athen&um or Academy (I forget on what
subject), and I had no little delight in pointing out the
word * paralel ' and several similar misspellings in it, as
he had reprimanded me for my own misspelling on a
recent occasion. ' Oh,' he said, * I don't profess to spell
correctly — spell, that is to say, according to rule. Spelling
and grammar were made for man, not man for spelling
and grammar.'

On my wife joining us he brought in cider and cakes,
as we both had to go into the City early, and could not
' wait for lunch. He displayed a number of new designs for
the Kelmscott Press, saying he was greatly pleased with
them, and speaking, as always, with affectionate admiration
of his collaborator, Burne-Jones. I asked if Burne-Jones
was getting at all inclined towards Socialism. He shrugged
his shoulders. * The Trafalgar Square riots terrified him
against Socialism at the outset/ he said. * If only we
could guarantee that the Social Revolution would not
burn down the National Gallery he might almost be per-
suaded to join us, I think. But who is going to guarantee
what the people, or, for that matter, the soldiers, will do or
will not do, should ever the flames of revolution burst forth ? '

As we arose to go I alluded to an article by him which
had appeared with his photograph in the January number
of the Labour Prophet — the organ of the new Labour
Church movement. I said that some of his old friends

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS 139

were surprised to see him writing in what they regarded as
a religious publication, and hoped he was not becoming
evangelical ! He explained that he had been urged to
write something about Socialism for that journal because
the Labour Church movement reached many earnest-
minded people who were averse from the anti-religious tone
of so much of our Socialist literature. He did not know
what the theological views of the Labour Church were,
but he understood that the idea was to push Socialism on
religious lines, and he thought that was useful and in sympathy
with many kindly folks' difficulties. Anti-religious bigotry
was twin brother to religious bigotry, and the Socialist
movement had suffered from it. He meant the article
to be a frank reconsideration of his anti-parliamentary
attitude, and hoped he had made his position in that respect
quite clear.

In my diary notes written at the time, I find against this
date (August 26, 1895) simply the laconic word ' Good-bye,'
though I had no thought at the time that it might prove
our last meeting. But I remember that at the gate he held
my hand longer than was his custom, and said ' I have been
greatly cheered by what you say about Keir Hardie and
the Labour movement. Our theories often blind us to
the truth.' Then, laying his hand on my shoulder, he said
' Ah, lad ! if the workers are really going to march — won't
we all fall in ! Again, good-bye, and good luck.'

These were, I think, the last words I ever heard from
his lips.

A few months later I stayed for a few days with my sister
at Hammersmith, but knowing that he was exceedingly ill,
and that it had been made known that he was unable to
see any visitors, I did not call at Kelmscott House, greatly
as I longed to do so. Yet I could not leave Hammersmith
without getting as near to him as I could. So one day I
went round to the Mall, and sat for an hour under the
elm tree on the bastion overlooking the river in front of
the house. Prayer was not a means of expressing emotion

i4o WILLIAM MORRIS

with me in those days, yet as I thought of William Morris
lying ill somewhere within that house, a flood of suppli-
cation that he might not be in pain, and might get well
again, filled my heart. I looked at the library window,
and could just catch a glance of the book-shelves. How
sacred that room was ! What priceless treasures were there !
What wonderful memories were enshrined in it of him
and of his superb comradeship ! I looked out on the river
and recalled his description of the scene in * News from
Nowhere,' and I recalled also how when he was writing
that book I told him that I had fallen in love with Ellen,
and he said he had fallen in love with her himself ! ' Oh,
and I shan't give her up to you — not without a tussle for
her anyway,' he said, with a smile, but almost jealously,
I thought. I found it hard to come away, not daring
even to knock at the door, lest it might seem as if I wished
to intrude on his seclusion.

He recovered from this attack of illness, but his frame
was completely shaken by it, and he was never well again.

On Sunday, August 9, 1896, I again, and for the last
time, lectured at Kelmscott House. Morris was then
away by his doctor's advice on a cruise to Spitzbergen with
his friend John Carruthers, in the forlorn hope of regaining
his health, and there was a subdued and inert air about
the place. My lecture raised a brisk discussion in the
meeting, but the debaters were mostly young men, new-
comers into the movement. Robert Blatchford and
E. F. Fay (the * Bounder ' of The Clarion), with whom
I was at that time intimately associated, came with me to
the meeting, and Blatchford said a few words, but none
of the old warriors unsheathed their blades. Already the
old Kelmscott regime seemed passing away. After the
meeting, instead of our having supper in the house, we had
supper at my sister's, and made merry till the morning hours ;
but the thought that he * My Captain, O My Captain '
was fading away, haunted my mirth. He returned from
his cruise in no wise benefited by it

LAST DAYS WITH MORRIS 141

Two months later, on Saturday, October 3, 1896,
William Morris died. I read the news in the Umpire
next day in Bury, where I was lecturing — a dreary wet day
in a dismal town. I spent next day in J. R. dynes' house
in Oldham, writing a memorial notice of him for the Labour
Leader, my pages stained with many a tear. The sun
of my Socialist firmament had gone out. It seemed as
though the colour and music had gone out of my life also.
I felt bereft and forlorn. For ten years his friendship over
my * living head, like heaven was bent.'

To me he was the greatest man in the world.

In my diary for October 4, I find it noted : * Socialism
seems all quite suddenly to have gone from its summer into
its winter time. William Morris and Kelmscott House
no more ! '

CHAPTER XV

HIS SOCIALISM : FELLOWSHIP AND WORK

IN an earlier chapter I recalled how Morris, when he first
met us in Gla gow, had flatly declared his indifference to
Marx's theory of value, or any other dogmas of political
economy. Yet in an interview published a year or two
later in Cassetfs Saturday Magazine, Morris was reported
to have said that he had been led towards Socialism by
Ruskin's teaching and his own artistic feeling, but that it
was the reading of Marx's * Capital ' that had finally made
him a convinced Socialist. This statement rather surprised
me, and on visiting him shortly afterwards in London I re-
ferred to the article, and asked him if it was true that Marx
had influenced in an important way his Socialist ideas.

' I don't think the Cossets Magazine chap quite put
it as I gave it him,' Morris replied ; ' but it is quite true
that I put some emphasis on Marx — more than I ought to
have done, perhaps. The fact is that I have often tried
to read the old German Israelite, but have never been able
to make head or tail of his algebraics. He is stiffer reading
than some of Browning's poetry. But you see most people
think I am a Socialist because I am a crazy sort of artist
and poet chap, and I mentioned Marx because I wanted
to be upsides with them and make believe that I am really
a tremendous Political Economist — which, thank God, I
am not ! I don't think I ever read a book on Political
Economy in my life — barring, if you choose to call it such,
Ruskin's " Unto This Last " — and I'll take precious good
care I never will ! '

142

FELLOWSHIP AND WORK 143

This strong disclaimer, though it smacks of that droll
exaggeration in which Morris in a whimsical way sometimes
indulged, expresses nevertheless the essential truth respect-
ing his Socialist persuasion. Morris was a Socialist by
reason of his whole intellectual and moral construction, and
whatever circumstances eventually led him to realise and
to proclaim himself a Socialist — and there were doubtless
many — his Socialism was none the less a necessary expression
of his whole nature.

His Socialism was of the Communist type, and he him-
self belonged to the old Utopian school rather than to the
modern Scientific Socialist school of thought. It is true
that occasionally he used distinctively Marxist phrases in
his lectures, and so gave the impression that he accepted
in the main the Scientific Socialist position. This was
notably the case in that most unsatisfactory series of chapters,
* Socialism, from the Root Up,' which he wrote for the
Commonweal in 1886-88 jointly with Belfort Bax, or
rather, which, as he himself said, Bax wrote and he said
ditto to. They were afterwards republished in book-form
under the title, * Socialism : its Growth and Outcome.'
But no one who knew him personally, or was familiar with
the general body of his writings, could fail to perceive that
these Marxist ideas did not really belong to his own sphere
of Socialist thought, but were adopted by him because of
their almost universal acceptance by his fellow Socialists,
and because he did not feel disposed to bother about doctrines
which, whether true or false, hardly interested him. One
perceives, especially in the case of ' Socialism, from the Root
Up,' that dogmatism about the evolution of the family or
the logical sequence of economic changes does not come
within the range of Morris' line of Socialist vision. This
he as good as acknowledged once when he said, alluding
playfully to Bax's visits while they were writing the book
together, * I am going to undergo compulsory Baxination
again to-day.'

His general conception of Socialism was formed in his

i44 WILLIAM MORRIS

mind before he came into touch with the Socialist move-
ment, or with Socialists at all. In his Art lectures,
delivered as early as 1878, we find passages in which
the essentials of his after- teaching of Socialism are clearly
set forth.

In saying that Morris' Socialism was Utopian rather than
Scientific, I mean that his Socialism was not derived from
any logical inferences from economic analyses of industrial
history, but from his whole conception of life. He did not
concern himself so much with the science of wealth, or
rather money-'hiaking, as with the art of living. While
ordaining absolute equality of wealth conditions for all as
essential to the realisation of the Co-operative Common-
wealth, he regarded all readjustments of economic con-
ditions as a means to an end rather than as ends in themselves.
The great object of Socialism was to place all men and women
on a footing of equality and brotherhood in order that they
might one and all have the utmost possible freedom to live
the fullest and happiest lives. The selfish striving for
gain, the fettering of one's fellow-men in order to benefit
by their oppression or misfortune, the ambition for personal
superiority or privilege of any kind, were motives wholly
abhorrent to his nature.

He did not regard mere quantity of riches or wealth
as being important objects of Socialism. Though in no
degree favouring asceticism or parsimony of living, he
nevertheless believed that in the main the greater the
simplicity of our mode of living, the greater would be the
happiness and the nobler the achievements of our lives.
This idea is expressed in all his descriptions of what he
pictured as ideal conditions of fellowship and work — as,
for example, in his song ' The Day is Coming,' in his lectures
on * Useful Work versus Useless Toil,' and ' How we live,
and how we might live,' and in his 'John Ball ' and * News
from Nowhere.'

So much indeed was he out of sympathy with all mere
stuffing of life with furniture, so to speak, with all elabora-

FELLOWSHIP AND WORK 145

tion of devices for cramming life with luxuries and ex-
citements, that he avowed with the utmost sincerity his
preference for the humblest sort of cottage life to that of the
millionaire splendour of Park Lane or of the most desirable
mansions of Villadom. Referring to his visit, in 1884, to
Edward Carpenter's little farm at Millthorpe, he wrote :
' I went to Chesterfield and saw Edward Carpenter on
Monday, and found him sensible and sympathetic at the
same time. I listened with longing heart to his account of
his patch of ground, seven acres : He says that he and his
fellow can almost live on it : they grow their own wheat
and send flowers and fruit to Chesterfield and Sheffield
markets : all sounds very agreeable to me. It seems to
me that a very real way to enjoy life is to accept all its
necessary ordinary details and turn them into pleasures by
taking interest in them : whereas modern civilisation
huddles them out of the way, has them done in a venal and
slovenly manner till they become real drudgery which
people can't help trying to avoid. Whiles I think, as a vision,
of a decent community as a refuge from our mean squabbles
and corrupt society ; but I am too old now, even if it were
not dastardly to desert.'

Nor was his repulsion from luxury, extravagance, and
superfluity of material wealth, and his longing for down-
rightly simple and even arduous conditions of life a merely
occasional or passing frame of mind. Again and again in
his discourses on Art and Labour does he affirm his belief
that the farther we go from the cottage and the nearer
to the palace, the farther we banish ourselves from the
sweetest and noblest joys of life. ' Art was not born in
the palace, rather she fell sick there,' he said in one of his
earliest addresses, and unceasingly in his Art lectures he
appealed against the whole plutocratic conception of life.
Here are a few sentences culled at random from his lectures
in which he puts his plea for simplicity of life into almost
axiomatic phrase :

' That which alone can produce popular art among

146 WILLIAM MORRIS

us is living a simple life. Once more I say that the great
foe of art (and life) is luxury.'

* Have nothing in your house that you do not know to
be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'

* Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery,
but the very foundation of refinement. A sanded floor
and white-washed walls, and the green trees and flowering
meads and living waters outside ; or a grimy palace amid
the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working
to smear dirt together so that it may be unnoticed ; which,
think you, is the most refined and the most fit for a gentleman
of those two dwellings ? '

' There are two virtues much needed in modern life
if it is ever to become sweet, and I am quite sure they are
absolutely necessary in sowing the seed of an art which is
to be made by the people, as a happiness to the maker and user,
These are honesty and simplicity of life.' (' The Art of
the People.')

' I have never been in a rich man's house which would
not have looked better for having a bonfire made outside
of it of nine-tenths of all it held.' (Ibid.)

* Luxury cannot exist without slavery of some kind
or other, and its abolition would be blessed, like the abolition
of other slaveries, by the freeing of both the slaves and their
masters.' (Ibid.)

Perhaps the most distinctive as well as the most prophetic
part of his teaching was his exaltation of work. No other
writer, ancient or modern, that I know of, has so glorified
work for its own sake. If ever man can be said to have
believed in work as the greatest human pleasure and as
the highest form of worship, it was he. In this respect his
teaching stands out almost as uniquely from the teaching
in prevalent Socialist literature as from that of literature
generally. Both Carlyle and Ruskin had, it is true, pro-
claimed the nobility of work ; but there was in their axioms
a preceptorial and disciplinary note. Work with them has
still something of the Old Testament penitential curse upon

FELLOWSHIP AND WORK 147

it. With Morris there is no such detraction. Ever and
ever again he dwells upon the idea that work is the greatest
boon of life, not simply because work is necessary for the
sustenance of life — what is necessary may yet be painful
and irksome — but because it is in itself a good and joyous
thing ; because it is the chief means whereby man can
express his creative powers, and give to his fellows the gifts
of his affection and diligence.

Underneath much of the prevalent teaching of Socialism,
especially that of Marxist propagandists, as in the teaching
of the Book of Genesis, there lurks the notion that work
is from its very nature an oppressive and hateful obligation,
to be borne at least as a burden, as a price to be paid for the
privilege of life. One feels when reading many of the leading
expositions of Socialism that we should want, were such a
thing possible, to free the workers not only from the present
conditions of work, but from work altogether. In other
words, there clings to Socialist teaching the idea — the
Capitalist idea, it might be called — that work is in its nature
a servitude and oppression, and that the ideal of complete
social emancipation would be that we should all be able to
live without work — live, that is to say, as * ladies and
gentlemen ' without having to do any work at all !

So far from regarding work in that light, so far from
looking upon work as being in itself an evil, an undesirable
or penitential task, Morris held work to be the highest, the
most God-like of all human capacities. Without work
life would cease to have any meaning or yield any noble
happiness at all. Hear him :

' The hope of pleasure in work itself : how strange
that hope must seem to some of my readers — to most of
them ! Yet I think to all living things there is a pleasure
in the exercise of their energies and that even the beasts
rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But a man at
work, making something which he feels will exist because
he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies
of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and

i48 WILLIAM MORRIS

imagination help him as he works. Not only his own
thoughts, but the thoughts of past ages guide his hand, and
as part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we
shall be men, and our days in the world will be happy and
eventful.'

And again, writing in the Commonweal on Bellamy's
* Looking Backward,' he says : * Mr. Bellamy worries
himself unnecessarily in seeking, with obvious failure, some
incentive to labour to replace the fear of starvation which
at present is the only one ; whereas it cannot be too often
repeated that the true incentive to useful and happy labour
is, and must be, pleasure in the work itself.'

That single sentence, as Mr. Mackail rightly observes,
contains the essence of all his belief in politics, in economics,
in art. I doubt if he ever delivered a lecture without re-
affirming it as a cardinal principle of his Socialist faith. It
might indeed be said that it was from his perception of the
direful blight which the degradation of labour has upon the
whole tree of life, and his abounding hope in the regenera-
tion of life, which the uplifting of labour to its true dignity
and delight would bring, that all his Socialist aspirations
sprang. Thus in 1879, several years before he saw his way
into the path of Socialist agitation, we find him declaring
in an address on ' The Art of the People ' to the Birming-
ham Art students : * If a man has work to do which he
despises, which does not satisfy his natural and rightful
desire for pleasure, the greater part of his life must pass
unhappily and without self-respect. Consider, I beg of
you, what that means, and what ruin must come of it in
the end. . . . The chief duty of the civilised world to-day
is to set about making labour happy for all, and to do its
utmost to minimise unhappy labour.'

We also find him in what was almost his last Socialist
testament, * News from Nowhere,' giving final emphasis to
this principle. My readers will know how in that Utopian
romance he makes old Hammond reply to his visitor from
the nineteenth century, who expresses astonishment that

FELLOWSHIP AND WORK 149

the people in the new epoch of Rest work without special
reward for their labour :

' No reward of labour ! ' exclaimed Hammond. * The
reward of labour is life. Is that not enough ? The reward
of creation. The wages which God gets, as people might
have said long time agone. If you are going to be paid for
the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work
means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent for
the creation of children.'

But the visitor objects that in the nineteenth century
it would have been said that there is a natural desire towards
the procreation of children, and a natural desire not to work.
Whereupon Hammond scouts that as an ancient platitude,
and wholly untrue, and explains that in the Communist
Commonwealth * all work is now made pleasurable either
because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which
the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement,
even when the work is not pleasant ; or else because it
has grown into a pleasurable habit, as is the case with what
you call mechanical work ; and lastly (and most of the work
is of this kind) because there is a conscious sensuous pleasure
in work itself ; it is done, that is, by artists.'

And this exaltation of work from being, as in the old
world, a servitude and an irksome toil, into a pleasurable
creation and art, Morris speaks of as being a far greater and
more important change than all the other changes con-
cerning crime, politics, property, and marriage which
Socialism will achieve.

He was not, as is commonly thought, opposed to the
use of machinery or labour-saving inventions. On the
contrary, he strongly urged that all merely laborious and
monotonous work should, as far as possible, be done by
machinery.1 He even denied that machinery was neces-
sarily distasteful from an Art point of view. ' It is,' he said,

1 See particularly his lectures on ' How we live, and how we
might live ' and ' Useful Work versus Useless Toil ' in his Signs of
Change.

150 WILLIAM MORRIS

4 the allowing machines to be our masters and not our
servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays.' But
he did not in the least rejoice at the prospect of supplanting
generally the energies of the mind and the skill of the hands
by universal ingenuities of mechanism. That way led,
he felt, to the eventual decay, not only of our physical
faculties, but of our imagination and our moral powers.
For this reason the conception of Socialism and life given
in Bellamy's * Looking Backward ' filled him with horror.
He was not blind to the many merits of that book — the
admirable desire to solve practical problems of wealth dis-
tribution, and the wonderful fertility of its suggestions for
ensuring social justice and equality all round. But he
simply could not abide the notion that the object of Socialism
was not only to get rid of the present inequalities of work
and reward, but to get rid as far as possible of any occasion
for work and exertion altogether, and thereby to reduce life
so far as possible to a passive experience of sensory and
intellectual excitement.

It was in protest against Bellamy's * Looking Backward '
with its notion of making civilisation a mere emporium of
artificial contrivances, and life a cram of sensuous experi-
ences, that he wrote his * News from Nowhere.' He was
greatly disturbed by the vogue of Bellamy's book. In one
of his letters to me at the time he said ' I suppose you have
seen or read, or at least tried to read, " Looking Backward."
I had to on Saturday, having promised to lecture on it.
Thank you, I wouldn't care to live in such a cockney
paradise as he imagines ! ' and in an early issue of the
Commonweal he wrote a formal criticism of the book.

Sam Bullock tells me that he remembers calling, as
lecture secretary of the Hammersmith Branch, on Morris
one Saturday afternoon, to ask him to lecture in the Kelms-
cott meeting- room on the Sunday evening in place of the
appointed lecturer, who was unable to come. Morris
objected that he had nothing new to lecture about, and had
already spoken there on any subject upon which he could

FELLOWSHIP AND WORK 151

find anything to say. Bullock suggested that he might
make a few comments on Bellamy's book — which Morris
told him he had just read. Morris brightened at the
suggestion and on the Sunday evening gave a running
commentary on the book, incidentally introducing by way
of contrast some of his own ideas of how people might live
and work in * a new day of fellowship, rest, and happiness.'
Doubtless it was this lecture which gave him the idea of
writing * News from Nowhere,' which immediately after-
wards began to appear in weekly instalments in the
Commonweal, and was intended as a counterblast to
4 Looking Backward.' It was written for the most part
in hurried snatches when travelling by train to and from
the City.

Morris never intended, however, ' News from Nowhere '
to be regarded as a serious plan or conspectus of Socialism,
and was both surprised and amused when he found the little
volume solemnly discussed as a text-book of Socialist
politics, economics, and morality. The story was meant
to be a sort of Socialist jeu cT esprit — a fancy picture, or
idyll, or romance. It is unlikely that Morris, while depre-
cating the assumption in ' Looking Backward ' that we
can forecast the regulations and details of a future society,
would himself fall into that very error.

Yet one meets with readers of * News from Nowhere '
who appear to be possessed with the idea that such whimsi-
calities in the story as the conversion of the present buildings
of the Houses of Parliament into a manure depot, the free
provision of all manner of fancifully carved tobacco pipes,
and the going about of road-dustmen in gorgeous medieval
raiment, constitute prime factors in Morris' conception of
the Socialist Commonwealth ! Nevertheless the book con-
tains not only delightful descriptions of the beautiful stretches
of the Thames Valley and charming delineations of men
and women moving amidst most pleasant circumstances
of life and industry, but pages of dialogue and reflection
that reveal the richest thoughts of his mind and the

i52 WILLIAM MORRIS

deepest feelings of his heart. Ellen, his hostess of the
Guest House, ' her face and hands and bare feet tanned quite
brown with the sun,' is surely one of the most exquisite
creations in prose literature, and where else have we so
vividly pictured the transience of modern civilisation and
the permanence of the loveliness of England as in the
description of the guest's journey together with Ellen in
the boat up the Thames ?

CHAPTER XVI

CHARACTERISTICS : HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING

MORRIS was not what is called an orator or eloquent speaker.
He was not reckoned among the front-rank speakers of
the movement, though the high quality of the substance
of his lectures, and the charm of his manner of speech, were
generally recognised. In none of the biographical notices
of him that I have seen is his platform speaking appraised
among his chief accomplishments. His defect in oratory
was not, needless to say, owing to any lack of intensity of
feeling, or to any dearth of ideas, or command of language
on his part. Nor can it be ascribed to the want of sufficient
practice on the platform ; for he must have addressed many
hundreds of meetings in the course of his public career.

His lack of oratory belonged to the mould of his nature.
This is easily discerned. His poetry no less than his prose
writing showed that the absence in him of florid and emo-
tional speech was a fundamental fact of his temperament and
genius. Whether this characteristic is to be reckoned a
merit or demerit in him is a matter of individual judgment.
There are many who will consider it wholly to the good
of his work and fame. For, as we all know, rhetoric and
declamatory expression of all kinds have fallen nowadays
into disrepute among almost all who pretend to art or literary
culture. In this respect modern aesthetic feeling among
the cultured classes is quite at variance with that of the
ancient Greeks (as distinct from a few heretics like Plato),
as it also is with modern popular taste. Rhetoric, or, at

154 WILLIAM MORRIS

any rate, platform oratory, as is witnessed by the fact of the
great vogue of eloquent preachers, and the huge crowds
that assemble to listen to famous political speakers, irrespective
of creed or party, is apparently as attractive to our present-
day * unsophisticated ' fellow citizens as it was alike to the
cultured and to the uncultured populace of Periclean
Athens.

For myself, whom my readers may by now suspect of
grudging any detraction whatever from Morris' excellences,
I may as well make a clean breast of it, and confess that
I am by no means persuaded that the gift of oratory or of
eloquent and ornate writing is a spurious one, or is in any
way allied to weakness of conviction or insincerity of mind.
Fools and knaves are by no means always eloquent or even
loquacious. Nor have I found — and this with me is a test
example — that the more eloquent of our Socialist propa-
gandists, or for that matter of politicians and preachers
generally, are less reliable in thought, or in word, or in deed
than their less eloquent brothers. Nor does history testify
against the gift of t tongues.' Many of the noblest teachers
and reformers, heroes and masters, were men and women
of powerful and attractive eloquence. Pericles, St. Paul,
St. Dominic, Savonarola, Luther, and notable publicists
in recent days, such as Ernest Jones, John Bright, Wendell
Phillips, Colonel Ingersoll, Charles Bradlaugh, Annie
Besant, Spurgeon, Jean Jaures, all of them were remarkable
orators ; and no one would, I think, say that they were
insincere or unreliable in character or speech. And I
confess further that for myself, not only good oratory on
the platform but eloquence and occasionally sheer rhetoric
in writing have much charm. I am among those who can
take whole-hearted delight in some of the more rhetorical
passages of poetry which can be found, for example, in
Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and Victor Hugo. I shall
even avow that where, rarely though it be, Morris himself
seems to verge on the borderline of rhetoric, as in some
parts of his ' John Ball ' and his * Aims of Art,' and perhaps,

HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING 155

too, in some of his Socialist chants, I feel he is attaining the
very highest pitch of sincerity of expression.

But having said that Morris was not an orator, and
without judging this to be either a merit or a defect in him,
I must hasten to say that his public speaking, to those who
had ears to hear, was one of the finest things to listen to
that could be heard on an English platform. It was so
like what one expected of him, so characteristic of the man,
so interesting in substance and manner, and withal so fresh,
so natural and uneffortful, and full of personal flavour.
It was as different from the customary platform oratory
as a mountain spring is from a garden fountain. His speech
did not come with a great rush and dazzling spray, bounding
high above the natural level of common speech, but welled
up easily and naturally, forming a fresh, translucent pool,
and making its way, not as a sluice or channel, but tracking
out its own course. It was conversational rather than
oratorical, with breaks and pauses corresponding to the
natural working of his thoughts. His voice, though not of
deep compass, was distinctively male, fairly strong and flexible,
but not loud or of great range ; not noticeably sonorous, but
never shrill, and always most pleasant to hear. Occasionally
he paused for the right word, or appeared to grope his way
for a moment, but he never stumbled in his sentences, or
got tangled or lost in his argument. He was characteristically
inclined, except when reasoning closely or dealing with the
gravest subjects, to break into a humorous vein, and to
express himself with a whimsical gesture or frank expletive.
He did not harangue his audiences, or preach, or teach them,
but spoke to them as a man to his friends or neighbours
and as one on their own level of intelligence and good-
will. As I have said elsewhere, the English language had a
new tune on his tongue, and when moved by deep feeling
there was a cadence or chant in his voice that was sweet and
good to hear.

But these things do not fully explain the secret of the
peculiar power and charm of Morris' platform speech.

156 WILLIAM MORRIS

If he was not an orator, he had something that was greater
than oratory, though I find it hard to define what I mean
by that saying. Perhaps the prime quality of his speaking
was its veracity. I mean by that the quality of saying
precisely no more and no less in words or in the emotion
or colour imparted to the words than the speaker thinks,
feels, or wishes to say. He expressed what was in his mind
as exactly as words could do. Except occasionally in con-
versation or private correspondence when in an expletive
or whimsical mood, he never indulged in over-emphasis
or hyperbole, as Carlyle and Ruskin so often did. His
meaning was never overmastered by his words — was never
encumbered or cloyed by conventional phrase or literary
jargon, or unduly heightened or barbed by metaphor or
epigram. Yet on the other hand he unhesitatingly used
the commonest idioms and tritest sayings when these ade-
quately expressed what he wished to say. His integrity of
utterance in this respect, both in writing and in speaking,
was, considering the custom of exaggerated and over-
emphasised expression in literature and public speech, truly
remarkable. This temperance and probity of speech is
one of the rarest qualities among educated and literary
people. Only amongst the simpler-minded and stronger-
natured type of the working class, especially among northern
countryfolk, can it be found, and then far from commonly.

There was yet another quality in Morris as a speaker
or teacher which I may .perhaps touch upon here, though
it belongs rather to the substance of his teaching than his
manner of speech. From the first time I heard him lecture
I was aware, though unable to say why, that there was some-
thing in his attitude towards his hearers, something, too, in
his vein of feeling towards the world in which we dwell,
that was different from that customary with speakers in
public address. What was it ? I tried to define it to
myself, but was puzzled.

On one occasion when he was addressing an open-air
meeting at Glasgow Green gates, I was struck so forcibly

HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING 157

with this characteristic, whatever it might be, that I fixed
in my mind several passages that seemed to me to be
particularly distinctive of the posture of his mind towards
the audience. I give one or two of them as nearly word
for word as I can remember :

' I feel quite at home in addressing you here in Glasgow
this afternoon. It is just such a meeting as this that I am
accustomed to address when at home in London on Sundays.
I find before me here just the same type of audience, mostly
working men, looking by no means particularly happy and,
if you will forgive my saying so, by no means particularly
well-fed or well-clothed. And I feel that what I have to
say to you this afternoon is just what I should feel compelled
to say were I speaking instead at Hammersmith Bridge or
in Hyde Park in London.

' Coming along to the meeting this afternoon our
comrade the secretary was telling me that there is a dis-
tressing amount of unemployment in Glasgow, and that
huge unemployed demonstrations have been held. That
is just what is told me wherever I go to speak. And I
never hear, or read, or think about it but my blood boils,
and indignation rises in my heart, against the whole system
of what is so proudly called " modern civilisation."

' I can speak, perhaps, on this subject of work with less
prejudice or personal bias than most men. I am neither
what you would call a working man nor an idle rich man,
though in a way I am a bit of both — with, as some folk might
say, the bad qualities of both and the good qualities of neither !
I am, as some of you know, a literary man and an artist of a
kind. I work both with my head and my hands : but not
from compulsion as most of you and my comrades here do,
nor merely as a sort of rich man's pastime, as doubtless some
of the Dukes do. I have never known what I fear many
of you unfortunately have known, actual poverty — the pain
of to-day's hunger and cold, and the fear of to-morrow's,
or the dread of a master's voice, or the hopeless despair of
unemployment. I have, I truly believe, lived as happy a

i58 WILLIAM MORRIS

life as anyone could wish to live, save for the misery of
seeing so much cruel wrong and needless suffering around
me. Yet I am no more entitled to that happiness than any
of my fellows.

* One of your university men was lamenting to me this
morning that the working class in Scotland were more
and more taking to cheap periodical literature and shoddy
professional music-hall jingles, to the neglect of your beautiful
vernacular Scottish songs and the works of Walter Scott and
other good writers. And it is, don't you think, a lamentable
thing that the literary taste of the people should, despite
the fact of the spread of what is called Education, or perhaps
largely in consequence of it, be turning away from one of
the few wholesome and beautiful things of the past now
left us, to the silly and trashy and mostly vile stuff written
and published nowadays merely as a means of money-
grabbing.

' In England they have a beautiful custom in the churches
of celebrating the gathering of the harvest by having a special
thanksgiving service, on which occasion the churches are
decorated with flowers, and the altar laden with all manner
of fruits, grains, and vegetables. I suppose you have a
similar custom in Scotland. The custom indeed seems to
be observed in all parts of the world, by peoples of all races
and all creeds.

4 A friend and comrade of mine, a master engineer,
who has carried out great engineering schemes in South
America, tells me that in dealing with the natives there,
it is much more important to treat or seem to treat them
kindly — humanly, that is to say — than even to treat them
justly. If, for example, when asked to do something —
help, say, in finding cattle, food, or material — they are asked
rather as friends than as inferiors, they will respond far more
willingly, even if the task is an unduly hard one. So also,
if when paying them for any work or purchases, miserable
though the payment may be, if what is given them is given
in a cheerful way, as though acknowledging a favour rather

HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING 159

than conferring one, the natives will hardly think of count-
ing what they receive or of disputing as to the amount
due.'

Such are a few snatches from his address on the occasion
referred to. Readers of his art lectures and his political
addresses will recall many passages attuned on a kindred
personal note. There is, for example, the striking personal
apologia in his lecture on ' Art and the Beauty of the Earth.'

' Look you, as I sit at my work at home, which is at
Hammersmith close to the river, I often hear go past the
window some of the ruffianism of which a good deal has
been said in the papers of late, and has been said before at
recurring periods. As I hear the yells and shrieks and all
the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare
and Milton, and I see the brutal, reckless faces and figures
go past me, it rouses in me recklessness and brutality also,
and fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I remember, as
I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck only of being
born respectable and rich that has put me on this side of the
window amid delightful books and lovely works of art,
and not on the other side in the empty street, the drink-
steeped liquor shops, and the foul and degraded lodgings.
What words can say what it all means ? '

What, I have asked myself, is there in those expressions
that mark them in my mind as so distinctive of Morris ?
I think I have found the answer. It is, I think, because
of the absence in them of any air of oracularity, any aloofness
of mind, or assumption of superior wisdom or virtue, any
speaking down to his hearers as though they were on an
inferior human or intellectual level. Always he had a
disposition to allude to his own comrades in his remarks,
to speak as one of them, and to make them and himself
friends with the audience. In other words it is, I think,
because they betoken in Morris an innate predisposition to
regard himself as one of the general community, as part of
the common fellowship of those around him, a fellow man,
a fellow citizen, a fellow dweller on earth, not only with

160 WILLIAM MORRIS

those whom he is addressing, but with all people in the
world.

How rare that posture of mind is among writers, reformers,
and public leaders, even those who are reckoned democratic !
Of the poets I can recollect none except Robert Burns
(different in temperament as he was) who is at all akin to
him in this respect. Shelley always seemed to belong to a
different world from mankind generally. Ruskin and
Carlyle both acclaimed the dignity of labour, and both spoke
as men who recognised the indivisible unity of rich and poor,
educated and uneducated. We are all of the one body
in God's sight, so they said. Nevertheless, they both posed
as men of higher spiritual calling, higher moral and intel-
lectual perception, than the mass of their fellows. The
public, the people, the democracy, were a rather shapeless,
nebulous mass or herd down below somewhere. With
Ruskin, the people are always * You ' ,• with Carlyle they are
even farther away, they are * They ' ; but with Morris the
people are always ' We? Ruskin and Carlyle are for ever
scolding, are admonishing the public and mankind as * School-
masters.' Morris always (except in explosive moments
when he seemed kindled into a flame of Olympian or
Jehovist wrath) spoke as a fellow-man and a fellow-sinner.
Even when referring to the wrong-doings and stupidities
of the public he almost invariably included himself as one
equally guilty with the rest. Seldom, even in his most
passionate protests as a Socialist against the evils of existing
society, did he think of separating himself, or Socialists as a
whole, from the full sweep of his expostulation.

Therein, I say, we discern something of that remarkable
quality in Morris which makes so unique and attractive, and,
I think, so prophetic, his character as a man and his teaching
as a Socialist.

It is generally supposed that Morris' health was seriously
impaired by his public speaking and agitation. Mr.
Mackail, in his ' Life of Morris,' and other writers on Morris
speak in this strain. A similar idea, as my readers know,

HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING 161

prevails with respect to many other public men, even those
who have lived, as so many public men do, to an advanced
age.

This idea that popular agitation, especially in the form
of public speaking, is injurious to the health, is, I think,
except in the case of particularly weak and excitable men,
an erroneous one, and is not supported by the testimony
of political biography. On the contrary, the evidence goes
to show that platform agitation, even when it takes the form
of arduous indoor and outdoor speaking, day after day, is
on the whole beneficial rather than harmful to both body
and mind. Politicians and preachers are comparatively a
long-lived class of men. Talleyrand, Lord John Russell,
M. Guizot, M. Thiers, Lord Beaconsfield, John Bright,
Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Sir Charles Dilke, Lord
Halsbury, M. Clemenceau, and Dr. John Clifford, who are
among the most active public men in recent history, all
have lived to a ripe old age. And even if we turn to the more
democratic class of agitators, who have spent the greater
part of their lives in popular (or perhaps I should say un-
popular] agitation, often having to undergo great strain and
hardship in constant travelling and speaking in all sorts of
conditions and seasons, do we not find the same testimony ?
Robert Owen; John Wesley in his eighty-ninth year;
George Jacob Holyoake lived till nearly ninety ; and Mr.
Robert Applegarth, the veteran Trade Union leader, is still
with us at over eighty years. And have we not the
striking instance of Mrs. Besant, who when a young
woman was, as she herself tells us, consumptive and was
told by her doctor that public lecturing would either
kill or cure her ? It cured her, and she is still alive and
splendidly energetic though well over seventy years.

It would seem, therefore, that the notion that public
agitation is inimical to health is a delusion.

Nor does it appear to me that the belief that Morris'
health was undermined by the wear and tear of his work
in the Socialist movement is well founded. Indeed, I am

162 WILLIAM MORRIS

persuaded that his Socialist agitation, so far from doing his
health harm, refreshed his spirit, and was physically beneficial
to him. He never, so far as I can ascertain, was more
vigorous or freer from ailments, or more cheerful and happy,
in the latter half of his life, than during the five years
of his most active participation in Socialist propaganda.

Doubtless the irritation and worry of the internal strife
in the movement in later years tended to depress him ; but
even then, may we not say that, so far from the strain of his
exertions being the cause of his break-down, it was not until
these dissensions led to his retirement from active propaganda
that his health began to give way ? Who knows but, had
he been able to keep clear of these irritating controversies
and had continued in the thick of the agitation, he might
have lived another twenty years ? And anyway, let us
remember that countless men and women of robust con-
stitutions, who never put foot on a public platform or become
embroiled in political strife, die long before they reach
Morris' age, which was sixty-two years.

I have, I think, already, as Mackail and others have done,
likened Morris in many ways to a child. This characteristic
of childlikeness has been frequently noted in men of creative
and imaginative minds. Goldsmith, Blake, and Shelley are
familiar instances. But in Morris the trait of childlikeness
was the more singular because of the otherwise dominantly
manly, self-reliant, and exceedingly manifest practical
capacity of the man. In Shelley's case the childlikeness
marked the poet's whole disposition, and constantly showed
itself in his thoughtlessness concerning not only the feelings
and interests, but even the existence of others, including
his wife and family, in the common affairs of life, and in
wholly wayward and irrational impulses and fancies. He
was full of superstition about ghosts and dreams, and,
grown man and father of a family as he was, would at times
run truant in the woods for days, or burst naked into a
drawing-room assembly of men and women. Morris showed
none of these more * infantile ' (shall I say ? ) peculiarities.

HIS PUBLIC SPEAKING 163

He was full grown in all his habits and capacities, and
thoroughly commonsense and competent to the finger-tips
in all the affairs of life. But yet there was ever in him
that spontaneity of liking and disliking, that wilfulness and
yet tractability, that predisposition at one moment to engage
in amusement and frolic, and the next to fall to desperate
seriousness, which makes unselfconscious childhood such an
unfailing source of perturbation and charm. His love of
bright colours, and all natural objects and beautiful things ;
his restless eagerness to be doing something with his hands;
his delight in companionship, in art and play, were all part
of this elemental freshness of his nature.

Perhaps the greatest charm of childhood is its unself-
conscious egoism, its ' ownselfness,' its un-posturingness.
No man was ever less capable of attitudinising or showing off
than Morris. One simply could not conceive of him saying
or doing anything in order to attract attention upon himself
or win admiration.

When, as so often he did, he told stories, or commented
seriously or amusingly on people or buildings or happenings
by the way, one felt that so far from doing so for the purpose
of making himself noticeable, he would have made the same
reflections to himself had no one been with him. The
descriptions given us of many notable men of genius, even
of such stately beings as George Meredith, staging their
behaviour or remarks beforehand when expecting interest-
ing visitors, would be unbelievable of William Morris.

CHAPTER XVII

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION

RELIGION was a subject on which Morris never touched,
not at any rate in a critical or confessionary way, in his
writings or public addresses, and but rarely I think in private
conversation. Only on one or two occasions did he ever
speak of his own ideas about religion in my hearing, and the
subject is rarely alluded to in his letters or conversations
in Mr. Mackail's life and May Morris' biographical notes.

Usually he spoke of himself as a pagan or an atheist,
but never dogmatically or boastfully ; nor did he encourage
argument on the subject.

He rather liked, when among us in Glasgow, to poke
fun at Scottish * unco guidism ' and * Sabbatarianism * —
both of which national characteristics had, however, already
become, or were becoming, issues of tradition rather than
conviction so far as the bulk of the town people in Scotland
were concerned.

On one occasion I happened incidentally to refer to
the decay of religious observances in Scotland. * But,'
said Morris, with a challenging twinkle in his eye, * you
Scotch folk never had any religion, never at least since John
Knox's day. You have merely a sort of theology, or rather
a dfe-w/ology mixed up with Calvinistic metaphysics.'

I retorted by saying that English people never had any
religion, they had merely * Churchgoing.' * Perhaps you
are in the main right,' he replied, * but at any rate their
churchgoing was on the whole not an unpleasant sort of

164

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 165

pastime. Their churches were and still in many parts of
the country usually are quite handsome buildings, good to
look at both from the outside and the inside — but your
Scottish Presbyterian conventicles — Oh my ! Besides, the
English Church service, however you may regard it through
your Scottish " no popery " blinkers, is not at all a bad sort
of way of making believe that you are grateful to Heaven
for the good things and happiness of life, being that it is
not Heaven's fault, but your own or somebody else's, if
you don't happen to possess yourself of them and enjoy
them.'

This idea of his, whimsically put as it was, that religion
or religious worship, if we are to have religion at all, should
be some mode of expressing the happiness of life, even as
art should be, appears to have been deeply rooted in his
mind. A story is related of him in connection with the
Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League meetings
which is characteristic of this persuasion of his.

The branch was accustomed, as my readers know, to
hold a meeting at Hammersmith Bridge on Sunday mornings
in which Morris often took part. The possession of the
ground was, however, contested by a group of Salvationists,
who were usually on the scene an hour earlier than the
Socialists. By a friendly arrangement it was eventually
agreed that the Salvationists should wind up promptly
at 11.30, provided the Socialists desisted until that time
from any rival oratory. As often as not, however, the
Salvationists, either from absorption in their mission or from,
as was suspected, a desire to hold the crowd away from the
' infidel ' teaching and * worldly ' hopes of the Socialists,
far exceeded their allotted span of time : a breach of con-
tract which always aroused Morris' * dander.'

On one such occasion, losing all patience, Morris broke
into the Salvationist ring, and addressing the Salvationist
who was speaking exclaimed, ' Look here, my friend, you
may think you are pleasing God by continuing your meeting
beyond the agreed-upon time, but you are playing a nasty

166 WILLIAM MORRIS

trick, nevertheless; and what sort of God is your God anyway?
Now I'll tell you the kind of God I should want my God to
be. He'd be a big-hearted, jolly chap, who'd want to see
everybody jolly and happy like Himself. He would talk
to us about His work, about the seasons and flowers and birds,
and so forth, and would say ' Gather round, boys, here's
plenty of good victuals, and good wine also — come, put your
hand to and help yourselves, and we'll have a pipe and a song
and a merry time together.'

No one who really believes in God as an All-benevolent,
Almighty Father, and who bears in mind Morris' inherently
childlike way of looking at all things from a human level,
will be disposed to see anything irreverent in this outburst.
His whole conception of life as consisting in fellowship, in
doing things to make oneself and one's fellows happy, his
hatred of cruelty and oppression, selfishness, sordidness and
ugliness in every form, was, if not religion itself, at least that
without which religion becomes an illogical and unfeeling
pietism or pretence. And it would be hard for any theologian
whose creed is in accord with the laudatory psalms, the
Messianic prophecies, and the essential teaching of the
Gospels, to deny that in Morris' conception of what life
on earth should be, and could be, there is a much nearer
approach to the true Kingdom of God than is to be found
in most of the conventional devotionalism of the Churches.

Yet many who are quite ready to see in what Morris
called his * paganism ' a religion of life, consistent as far
as it goes with the highest spiritual ideals, are disappointed
by the absence in him of apparently any interest in beliefs
and hopes concerning invisible things, concerning the great
questions of the existence of the world, of life, of death,
of eternity— questions which have pressed on the minds
of the great thinkers and poets of all ages from Job and
Aeschylus, Socrates and Omar Khayyam, Dante and
Shakespeare, Spinoza and Milton, Hegel and Shelley.
This sense of disappointment with the lack of any spiritual
purpose or spiritual hope in Morris' teaching is, if I am

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 167

to judge from my own experience in later days, as well as
from what I gather from my book-reading and from my
conversations with others, more keenly or, at least, more
widely felt now, than in Morris' day — quite recent though
that be.

Supernaturalism and mysticism of every kind were then
still in almost complete intellectual disrepute, bundled out
of cultivated consideration by the Higher Criticism and
scientific agnosticism. Thoughtful minds generally turned
as implacably away from theosophy or any sort of deism or
theism as from Biblical revelation. Old-world wisdom and
old wives' wisdom were alike tabooed.

But a great change in the attitude of free thought is
manifest since then. Earnest minds no longer presume the
all-sufficiency of the laboratory and dissecting table as
oracles of the mystery of matter and life. The advance
of scientific knowledge — the astonishing discovery of the
atom and the cell, and of the unsubstantially or unma-
teriality, so to speak, of matter itself, and of the elusiveness
of energy and life, as indicated by the newer theories of"
the nature of the ether, and the acceptance of thought-
transference as a physical or psychological fact — these and
other remarkable scientific discoveries which are leading
science to what is seemingly the borderline of a world
beyond the cognizance of the bodily senses, have powerfully
affected the rationalism and idealism of the present day.

So great indeed has been the reaction of intelligent
opinion in this respect, that no solution, however complete
it be, of the problem of human happiness in relation to the
material circumstances of life, suffices for the needs of
thoughtful minds. Noble and beautiful as we may succeed
in making the practice of life, this achievement alone will
not yield us a self-containing philosophy or religion of life.
It does not provide due nourishment and exercise for the
intellectual and physical faculties of a large portion of the
men and women in our midst to-day. The soul or spirit
puts forth imperative claims for consideration.

168 WILLIAM MORRIS

Sharing, as I myself now do, very largely in this changed
outlook of mind, I find the question forces itself upon me
as it doubtless also does on many readers of these pages — Is
the gospel of Art and Socialism as exemplified in the work
and teaching of William Morris adequate as a practical
precept and philosophy of life ? Would I, for example,
say to any earnest-minded young man or woman, * Go and
follow as far as in your power lies the teaching of William
Morris, and therein you will find the whole duty and
Kingdom of Man ? ' No, indeed, I should not. My
infatuation, if such it be, for Morris' genius and achieve-
ment does not carry me to so rash a conclusion. But I
should unhesitatingly say * Go to Morris and follow him
as far as relates to your duty towards your fellows, as friends,
citizens, and workers, as far as concerns all things embraced
in the terms, Society, industry, art, politics, and the common
life of the community, and you will not go far wrong ;
indeed I do not think you will go wrong at all.' Morris'
practical teaching he himself has crystallised into an axiom :
4 There are only two ways to-day of being really happy —
to work for Socialism or to do work worthy of Socialism.'
And to doers of the will, knowledge of the doctrine has
been promised.

But having said so much on the subject of Morris and
religion, I perceive I must yet, for my own satisfaction,
say a word or two more. For I find myself haunted with
the thought that I, like others who knew him, may have
too readily assumed that because he did not in his public
utterances or except in rare instances in private conver-
sations (so far as I have heard tell) discuss the deeper
questions of religion, he therefore took no interest in these
questions, and possessed no beliefs or hopes concerning them.
How far wrong all this may be ! Indeed, considering how
essentially moral (I use the word in its strongest and truest
sense) was Morris' whole attitude to life, and how deeply
instinctive were the powers of his nature, it seems incredible
that there did not lie somewhere in him thoughts and

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 169

cravings beyond what the senses and experience of what
we call the material world can supply.

The fact that he did not choose to speak about these
themes, that he did not feel he was likely to derive any
satisfaction from the discussion of them, may as reasonably
be interpreted as an indication of the deep regard in which
he held them, as of mere indifference towards them. He
knew enough about theological and philosophical controversy
to know that all the disputation of the ages had resulted in
no clearer understanding of the reason or mystery of these
problems. And is it not true besides that it is often just
those subjects — subjects relating to our deeper intellectual
emotions — that we shrink most from dragging into the
arena of discussion ? They lie too deep for ratiocination.
The light must come to each from within not without.

One evening, probably the last I spent with him, sitting
in the library, he asked abruptly :

' Do you ever think about death ? I hate to think
about it, but my illness has forced the thought of it on me,
worse luck. Yes, I hate it, but I don't fear it. I love
life, I love the world. The world contains everything
beautiful and joyful. I know of no happiness that I can
desire, no life that I should wish to live, that could give me
more happiness than this world and life can give. Barring
human wrong-doing, and disease, decrepit old age, and
death, I see no imperfection in it. Heaven, or another
life beyond the grave, of which men dream and hope so
fondly, could give me nothing which I possess the
faculties to use or enjoy, that the present world and life
cannot give, except maybe — were it true — reunion with
those who have gone before or who will shortly afterwards
follow. Human wrong-doing and perhaps disease can
be got rid of: but old age and death are irremediable.
Sometimes death appears to me awful, terrible, so cruel,
so absurd. Yet there are times when I don't have that
feeling and death seems sweet and desirable. I sometimes
think how sweet it would be to lie in the earth at the feet

170 WILLIAM MORRIS

of the grass and flowers, if only I could see the old church,
and the meadow, and hear the birds and the voices of the
village folk. But that, of course, would not be death ;
and I suppose that I should soon want to be up and doing.
No, I cannot think it out. It is inexplicable.

* There is Tolstoy, too. There is much that is inter-
esting in him and in his " Inward Light " idea. I do not
despise his teaching. I only feel that it leads me deeper into
the insoluble mystery.'

I must warn my readers that in these jottings I am
giving rather what expresses my present impression of some
of Morris' observations than what he actually said or meant
to convey. My mind, as I have already said, was not,
at that time, closely bent on religious topics. Had I been
listening to him now, or even a year or two later, when
my mind was re-opening itself to the wonder of these high
questions of belief — with what ardour and care I should
have made record of every word of his conversation !

Only on one other occasion did he speak to me in an
intimate way about the deeper problems of religion. I
had not intended trying to set down in these pages his
remarks on that occasion, because on my first reflecting
back on our conversation my recollection of it hardly seemed
to yield any additional light on the inner state of his mind.
But the foregoing considerations have now made me think
that I may be wrong in that judgment ; and I have decided
therefore to recall as clearly as I can the tenor of his
remarks.

The conversation to which I refer took place during
one of my last talks with him : indeed, I am not sure
but that it was the very last time we spoke together in his
library at Kelmscott House. I cannot now remember what
led him to allude to the subject ; but perhaps it arose from
my having mentioned to him that I had, that morning,
on my way to his house, met Mr. Touzeau Paris, a neighbour

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 171

of his, formerly an ardent secularist lecturer, and now no
less zealous as a propagandist in the Socialist movement.

* What are your present-day opinions about religion ? '
he asked abruptly.

I replied that I was still, so far as I knew, an agnostic ;
but that I was not so sure now as I used to be that agnos-
ticism or materialism was the last word on the subject.

* Perhaps,' he said, ' I am much in the same position ;
but I have never allowed myself to worry about these ques-
tions since I was at Oxford thinking of becoming a parson.
Don't you think I should have made a capital bishop ? —
I should like to have swaggered about in full canonicals
anyway, but not in shovel hat, apron and gaiters — Oh my !
But so far as I can discover from logical thinking, I am
what is called bluntly an Atheist. I cannot see any real
evidence of the existence of God or of immortality in the
facts of the world — amazing as is the whole phenomenon
of the universe. And of this I am absolutely convinced —
that if there is a God, He never meant us to know much
about Himself, or indeed to concern ourselves about Him
at all. Had He so wished, don't you think He would have
made His existence and wishes so overwhelmingly clear
to us that we could not possibly have ever doubted about
it at all ?

' But Atheist though I must consider myself when I
reason about the matter, my Atheism has as little effect upon
my ordinary conduct and work-a-day views of things, as
belief in Christ appears to have on the majority of Christians.
So far as I commonly think and act, I do so precisely as do
most other fairly sensible folk — that is to say, I think and
act in accordance with the thoughts, traditions, and habits
of my day and generation. Commonly, in all that concerns
my thought and work, I think of God and Christ, Angels
and Saints, just as do devout churchmen, and so also in a
way when I think about Greek and Scandinavian mythology,
I do so doubtless as the Greeks and Norsemen did. The
Gods are all as real to my imagination as are historical and

172 WILLIAM MORRIS

living persons, and their miraculous powers seem quite
natural to their office, so to speak. Some people, as you
know, have upbraided Burne-Jones and myself for using
so much Christian legend and symbolism in our work, all
of which they say is quite outside the belief of any but most
crudely superstitious minds ; but the fools do not perceive that
with us in our art Christian legends and symbolism are as
true as with any of themselves — as true and as eternal as
the world itself in which we live. When, for example, I
look at Burne-Jones' " The Merciful Knight," in which
the Christ figure on the crucifix stoops down to kiss the
Knight, the meaning and lesson of the picture is not a whit
less true or real to me than to Cardinal Newman or Bishop
Lightfoot. In a sense, therefore, I am just as much a
Christian as are professed Christians, and in the practical
sense of believing in Christ's example and teaching I am, I
hope, much more a Christian than the majority of them are.
And I suspect that if we got to close terms we should find
also that they are just about as much Atheists and Infidels
as are Annie Besant and myself. What do you think ? '

Then, after a moment, he observed, * The truth is
that none of us know what actually the universe is of which
we ourselves form a part. Priests, prophets, and philo-
sophers in all ages have puzzled themselves trying to find
out God, and are no nearer the end of their quest to-day
than five thousand years ago. We do not know what we
ourselves are, or what the world is, nor, if it comes to that,
do we know what poetry, or art, or happiness is. One
thing is quite certain to me, and that is that our beliefs,
whatever they be, whether concerning God, or nature, or
art, or happiness, are in the end only of account in so far
as they affect the right doings of our lives, so far, in fact, as
they make ourselves and our fellows happy. And in actual
fact I find about the same amount of goodness and badness,
happiness and misery among peoples of all creeds — Jew,
Christian, and Gentile. On the whole, therefore, I opine
that our religion, our duty, and our happiness are one and

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 173

the same — and our duty and happiness is, or ought to be,
to grow and live, to be beautiful and happy as the flowers
and the birds are. God, if there is a God, will never be
angry with us for doing or being that ; and if there be, as
perhaps most of us sometimes almost hope there may be,
an after-life, we shan't be the less fit for its fellowship by
having made ourselves good fellows in this.'

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

THE COMMONWEAL

MORRIS undertook the editorship of the Commonweal with
great reluctance, and only because there was no one else
who had the time or capacity for the work who could
be entrusted with it. Besides, as he knew that he would have
to be financially responsible for the paper, it was, of course
rather important, in view of the laws of sedition and libel,
that he should have control of its contents. He had stipu-
lated that his editorship would chiefly be of a figure-head
character, and that the bulk of the technical and drudgery
work should be put on the shoulders of the sub-editor, who
would be paid for his services.

Dr. Aveling was appointed sub-editor in the first instance,
but was asked to resign after a year or so, and H. H. Sparling
was appointed in his place. David Nicol became sub-
editor in 1889.

The first number of the Commonweal appeared in
February 1885, and the last number under Morris' editor-
ship in August 1889. It was continued, as I have
recorded elsewhere, as an Anarchist journal for one or two
years afterwards, latterly as a monthly, but dwindled into
obscurity.

The loss on running the Commonweal was always
heavy, and had to be met by Morris out of his own purse.
In one of his letters to me in 1888, I think, he estimated
the circulation of the paper then at 2800 copies, and the

177 N

178 WILLIAM MORRIS

weekly deficit at £4. In a later letter he says : * I am now
paying for the League (including Commonweal) at the rate
of £500 a year, and I cannot afford it.'

The task of editorship, as I have said, from the outset
was distasteful to him, not so much because, as is commonly
supposed, he felt he had no aptitude for journalism, as
because from the circumstances of the case it required him
to give so much attention to the mere controversial side of
party politics. I have not the least doubt that he would
have made as good a shape at the craft of journalism as at
the many other crafts which he so successfully took up,
had the work enticed him. I can well imagine him col-
laborating in running a journal devoted to Socialism, or to
art, or literature, or to any branch of work in which he was
deeply interested, and proving himself first-rate as an editor
or contributor. Those who know how invariably lively,
instructive, and to the point were his remarks in conver-
sation and in his letters on almost every subject that con-
cerned the affairs of life will, I think, agree with me here.
But in writing for the Commonweal, the official journal of
the League, he was expected to write, week after week,
about the tiresome and now quite obsolete incidents and
controversies of Gladstone-Salisbury politics — a task into
which he could put no heart.

Scanning his Commonweal notes to-day, one perceives
that he is rarely himself in them, but is writing perfunctorily,
dealing with matters which he thought it was the duty of
the editor of the Commonweal to say. Thus he is often
laboriously censorious, and his notes make heavy and dull
reading. The niceties, trickeries, and obvious gammon of
so much of what was going on in the name of politics
were unsuitable for treatment from the serious point of
view with which he regarded the plight of the working-
class, and the revolutionary struggle which he saw con-
fronting the civilised world. But he was not always laboured
•or dull ; and it was rare for him to write on any theme
without saying something fresh and suggestive. Even

APPENDIX 179

when belabouring for the hundredth time Gladstone,
Chamberlain, and Balfour, or rating as if by rote some
capitalist apologia by Professor Leone Levi or Sir Thomas
Brassey, he seldom failed to introduce some phrase or turn
of thought outside the range of ordinary journalist allusion.

Such as it was, considering the limitations of its space,
and the restrictions of its purpose, the Commonweal
compared favourably with any other Socialist or propa-
gandist journal of its day. There are to be found in it,
I venture to think, more pages of matter interesting to read
to-day than can be found in any similar contemporary
publication. Alike in get-up and in the quality of its
contributions, especially during the three years 1887-1889,
when Morris was rid of the disturbing meddlings of Dr.
Aveling (his then sub-editor) and before the Anarchist
influences began to force themselves upon him, it will
bear comparison proudly with either its weekly rival
Justice, or with Our Corner, To-Day, or the Practical
Socialist, monthly magazines which enjoyed the advantages
of the collaboration of such experienced journalists as
Annie Besant, Hubert Bland, Bernard Shaw, and other
Fabian Fleet Street intellectuals. Nor should we fail to note
that from the outset of his editorship of the Common-
weal, as with all things to which he turned his hands,
Morris sought as best he could with the means at his disposal
to embody in his work right principles of conduct and of
art. Thus he tried to make the paper in some degree a
good example of typographical art, designing for it a simple
but beautiful title block, and insisting upon good, readable
type and consistency of headings and spacing throughout —
eschewing all vulgarisations of display. Also he set his face
like flint against any log-rolling or personal flattery in its
columns, and against all commercial advertisements that
would degrade the character of the paper, and against
purveying merely 'spicy* or garish paragraphs. Also he
aimed that the paper should be primarily educational in its

180 WILLIAM MORRIS

character, and such as might give to everyone who looked
at it, whether workman or intellectual, a due impression of
the high seriousness and greatness of the Socialist aims,
and proof that Socialism was not a mere form of political
faction, but was concerned with all questions relating to
the advance of the thought and life of the nation.

Imperfectly as he succeeded in these aims, it is well to
remember that at least he made the best effort in his power
to accomplish them. In this, as in all other things to which
he set his mind or hands, he gave proof of the sincerity with
which he held the principles he laid down for his own and
others' guidance.

II

LETTERS FROM MORRIS,
WITH INTRODUCTION BY J. B. G.

AMONG the few treasures I possess are letters, books, and
photographs of my co-workers in the Socialist movement,
and among the most valued of these are those relating to
William Morris. Small as is my little collection of relics
of Morris, it includes, besides autographed copies of several of
his books, and one or two photographs, one very great treasure,
namely, a collection of letters written by him to me between
1885 and 1901. These form in themselves an exceedingly
interesting record of Morris' views and of his intense
absorption in the work of the League during its period of
greatest propaganda activity. Mr. Mackail did not know
of their existence when he wrote Morris' Life, though he
has since read them. May Morris, however, has made a
number of extracts from them in her biographical intro-
ductions to her complete edition of Morris' works. She
has also most kindly had the letters handsomely bound for
me in red leather by Mr. Douglas Cockerell, who, together
with Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, has done so much both
by his writings and his own handiwork to revive and advance
the art of bookbinding.

In vol. xx, page xlii, of the complete edition, May
Morris introduces several quotations from these letters in
a paragraph in which she says that Morris looked forward
to his provincial tours, especially those to Glasgow and
Scotland generally, as * his annual holiday,' so to speak.

181

1 82 WILLIAM MORRIS

4 Wearied by efforts in London to keep the peace between
impossible elements in the League, it was no small pleasure
to him to meet these men who delighted in him, and who
gathered around him in the evenings clamouring for news
from down south, and singing him old ballads and rollicking
college songs till the small hours. Like their friend from
the south, they had their minds fixed on the ultimate goal
of perfect freedom and on the immediate study and under-
standing of the claims of Socialism. Bruce Glasier,
perhaps thanks to his mother, a sympathetic lady of Gaelic
blood, had a strong poetic strain in him too, and enthusiasm
of a quality that years have not impaired.'

Morris was so frankly outspoken in all his utterances,
public and private, that except with regard to occasional
personal remarks about his colleagues and other people,
and concerning some of his more private affairs, his letters
rarely reveal any shade of opinion or deliverance, which
those who are generally acquainted with his writings would
discover with surprise. But they reveal some of those
traits of point-blankness of opinion, or right-downness of
conviction, and above all those whimsicalities of mood,
which as a rule he only permitted himself to express in his
freest conversations with friends.

In all I received some seventy letters from him, but
possess now only fifty-six of them, as I gave some away
to comrades who were eager to possess a memento of him.
The letters cover a period of ten years, from February

1886 to September 1896 — a few weeks before he died.
The majority of them were written between the years

1887 and 1889, when I was associated with him in the
work of the Socialist League. After that period I rarely
corresponded with him by letter, as I had during the suc-
ceeding three or four years to go more frequently to London,
and saw him often at Hammersmith.

The letters relate chiefly to the work of the Socialist
League, especially to the internal controversies in the
party, and to the Commonweal. They contain, however,

APPENDIX 183

frequent allusions to public affairs, and are sprinkled over
with characteristic obiter dicta concerning the personalities
of the movement.

My intention at first was only to give a very few extracts
here and there from them, but on reading them over afresh
I feel that for Socialist readers, at any rate, they possess so
much interest — alike because of the intimate light which
they throw upon the early circumstances of the movement,
and because they display not only Morris' intense earnest-
ness in the work of Socialism, but the zeal and sound common-
sense with which he tackled the practical difficulties and
controversial problems which beset the movement in its
beginning — that I have decided to give the greater portion
of them as they stand. Besides simply as letters coming from
his pen, they are, as I have said, so characteristic in purpose
and form, that I feel sure they will be welcomed by all
lovers of Morris.

Morris had the disability, if it be such, of being incapable
of assuming any character or views other than his own.
He could never have been an actor ; he had no histrionic
talent. In his speech, his writings, his art, in all things
that he did, he was always William Morris. There never
perhaps was an artist or writer whose work was invariably
so unmistakably his own. From but a sentence or two
of any writing of his, or the smallest scrap of one of his
designs, his authorship can be discovered at once.

It follows from this that one can hardly, as in the case
of many authors, speak of his letter-writing as being different
in character from his book- writing. His letters are just
as his books, except that in the former he is sometimes more
blunt in phrase or whimsical and off-hand in his mood
of the moment. Whether, therefore, he is to be classed
among those authors who rank as great letter-writers, I am
unable to give an opinion. There appear to be as many
varieties in what is reckoned first-rate letter- writing as in
every other department of literature. Chesterfield, Ruther-
ford, Cowper, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Lord Acton, are all

184 WILLIAM MORRIS

famed as letter-writers, yet how different in substance and
style are their respective productions !

Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith

February zoth (1886).

DEAR MR. GLASIER, — I must ask your pardon re your
* Law and Order.' 1 We shall not have room for it
this month ; but I will try to put it in next (April). You
will excuse me, I hope, for keeping other poems out in
favour of my own ; but as mine is a * continuation ' the
effect is bad if I slip a number, as I have sometimes been
obliged to do. I think your * Ballade ' is good ; brisk and
spirited.

Yours fraternally,

WILLIAM MORRIS.

The Commonweal Publishing Office,

13 Farringdon Road, London, E.G.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — About coming to Glasgow. I
have promised the Industrial Remuneration people2 to
lecture (the same lecture) at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and
Dundee, beginning on June 23rd. I could not come
before as the weekly Comm. and my Dublin journey
absolutely prevented me. Perhaps something might be
done as to giving a special lecture under the auspices of the
branch when I come. Commonweal : — I want you to
write for us whatever you think you can do well, and please
let us have something soon.

Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith,

April 24th (1886).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Thanks for your note. Perhaps
an extra lecture or lectures could be managed on my return
from Dundee, which is the last place where I give my lecture

1 The ' Ballade of Law and Order,' verses by myself which
appeared in Commonweal, April 1886.

* A series of additional lectures carried on from the Industria
Remuneration Conference held at Edinburgh, January 1886.
See footnote to Chapter III.

APPENDIX 185

for those folk. See how it can be done and make proposals ;
as the Ind. Rem. people pay me, it would be well to use
the occasion.

As to your letter re Bax, I am not quite sure that it
would be wise to put it in as it would be cutting the dam of
the waters of controversy, since, of course, Bax must be
allowed to reply. I will consult with him next Wednesday,
and do you please consider the matter yourself. The letter
is well written and there is of course much reason in it,
but on the whole I agree with Bax. The religion-education-
family question is a difficult one, if one looks at it from the
point of view of transitional Socialism, and we might, I
think (not agreeing with Bax here) be content to let it alone
in that stage. But when Socialism is complete the new
economics will have transformed the family, and this will
clear up the difficulty ; nor do I believe there will be any
necessity for using compulsion towards rational education.
Meantime we must be clear about one thing, that, in opposi-
tion to the present bourgeois view, we hold that children
are persons, not property, and so have a right to claim all the
advantages which the community provides for every citizen.
Again, as to the woman matter, it seems to me that there is
more to be said on Bax's side than you suppose. For my
part, being a male man, I naturally think more of the female
man than I do of my own sex : but you must not forget
that child-bearing makes women inferior to men, since a
certain time of their lives they must be dependent on them.
Of course we must claim absolute equality of condition
between women and men, as between other groups, but
it would be poor economy setting women to do men's work
(as unluckily they often do now) or vice versa.

However, this is rambling. I hope you will do all you
can to push Commonweal, and have a little patience if it is
not all you could desire at first. I think the May ist number
will be a good one. Notes especially on Labour questions
are much looked for from the branches ; we want to keep
alongside the times as much as possible.

i86 WILLIAM MORRIS

August i6th (1886).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Please send us some more copy
for Commonweal ; for I am very anxious sometimes about
the supply of that article. You will see that we are in hot
water again with the police here, and for my part I think it
a great nuisance. It is, after all, a side issue, and I grudge
everything that takes people's attention off the true eco-
nomical and social issues, which are the only things of
importance. Still, we must fight out this skirmish, though
I hope wisely.

With fraternal greetings from all of us.

December is/, 1886.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Many thanks for your long,
interesting, and hopeful letter. I was well pleased with
all you had to tell me, except that you had been ill and were
out of work. I suppose you will think I am teaching, if
not my grandmother, yet at least my grandson, to suck eggs,
when I say that it is most important that you should get more
fuglemen. It seems to me that it would be good winter
work for you to ' mutually improve ' each other in Socialism
and in public speaking. At Hammersmith we are having
a class on Sundays to bring out young speakers, and try
to cure them of 'stage-fever,' and their wrigglements to
avoid speaking are amusing. I am much pleased to hear
your views as to the parliamentary side of things ; all the
more as, to say the truth, up here we are having some trouble
with some of our friends on that point. I think needlessly,
because, after all, they have no more wish than the others to
push the League into electioneering.

Yes, I did say that to Kropotkin ; but I did not mean
that at some time or other it might not be necessary for
Socialists to go into Parliament in order to break it up ; but
again, that could only be when we are very much more
advanced than we are now ; in short, on the verge of a
revolution ; so that we might either capture the army, or
shake their confidence in the legality of their position.

APPENDIX 187

At present it is not worth while even thinking of that,
and our sole business is to make Socialists. I really feel
sickened at the idea of all the intrigue and degradation of
concession which would be necessary to us as a parliamentary
party ; nor do I see any necessity for a revolutionary party
doing any ' dirty work ' at all, or soiling ourselves with any-
thing that would unfit us for being due citizens of the new
order of things. As for the S.D.F., if their leaders really
believe in the usefulness of the measures which they are
putting forward, let them go on ; but if they do not believe,
they are playing a dangerous game. And in any case their
present successes are won at the expense of withdrawing
real Socialism from view in favour of mere palliation and
* reform.'

For the rest, I think it is a mistake to play at revolt ;
it is but poor propaganda to behave like a dog sniffing at a
red-hot poker, and being obliged to draw his nose back in
a hurry for fear of being burnt. As to Hyndman's patronage
of me, I am proud enough to be humble, and am glad not
to be put down as an enemy by any section of Socialists ;
but as to what he says about the League in London, that
be damned ! As a party of principle, we are not likely to
number as many members as an opportunist body ; but we
have several solid and increasing branches here. A good
South London branch has lately been formed ; we Hammer-
smith chaps have formed a Fulham one now flourishing ;
Hackney is not bad ; Hoxton is good ; Mile End is being
reorganised ; North London is much improved ; Blooms-
bury is very much so ; Mitcham has been set on its legs by
Kitz ; Croydon is sound, though somewhat sleepy. Of
course we ought to do much more, but we are suffering
from the lack of energetic initiative men, who are not
overburdened with work and responsibilities. It is true
that we have far too much bickering over our Central
Council work ; but I feel sure that the branches will take
care that we shall not spoil all by that, if we haven't the
sense to do so ourselves, which, however, I think we shall

188 WILLIAM MORRIS

do. I mention this as you will possibly have heard exag-
gerated reports of it, from S.D.F. people or otherwise.
I don't suppose that any body of men can be quite free from
such troubles. I know that S.D.F. is not, in spite of all
their being bossed by three or four men.

As to Edinburgh, it would appear that they know more
of my movements than I do myself ; but I suppose I must
assume that they have the gift of prophecy, and go north in
March next ; all the more as I want to visit Lancaster again,
where something is to be done, I hope. So of course I will
come to Glasgow that while.

By the way, what about this lock-out and strike in
Dundee ? Can any of our friends do anything there ?
As to my pars on Salisbury and Churchill, you must remem-
ber, 1st, that I make them stalking-horses for bringing
Constitutionalism into contempt ; 2nd, that in London
there are people inclined towards Socialism who haven't got
as far as Radicalism yet, and think Tory Democracy might
help them, save the mark ! — but I will mend, I will mend.

With fraternal greetings and best wishes all round.

February i8th (1887).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Cunninghame Graham is going
to speak at a meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday. In case
you have not heard of it before, though I suppose you will
have, I write to tell you, so that you may roll up there all
you can.

I send you my hearty congratulations on your meeting
of last Sunday.1 I think you have acted both boldly
and prudently in not letting the matter slip away from
you, and carrying out your meeting well ; and you seem,
to judge from the reports, to have said just the right thing.
Good luck be with you.

P.S. — Cunninghame Graham's address in Glasgow is
George Hotel, George Square.

1 A special demonstration held under the auspices of the Glasgow
branch of the Socialist League in support of the Lanarkshire miners'
•trike.

APPENDIX 189

March i8th, 1887.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — As to lecture : it has yet (alas ! )
to be written, and by whatever name it were called would
smell as sweet or as sour. I am not very likely, I fear, to
overload it with economics ; but in case anyone should
think himself beguiled by false pretences, suppose we call
it * True and False Society.'

I note April 3 for the date of the Glasgow lecture ;
and Hamilton, when will that be ? Also could we arrange
for a Dundee trip and lecture ? Edinburgh, of course, will
expect another dose ; and there was some talk of Aberdeen ;
but that I think I can scarcely manage, as Lancaster expects
me on my way back. Will you talk to the Edinburgh folk
and sketch out some plan, and I'll see if it can be done.

As to the proposed new paper, I didn't mean that we
should have but one or two always, I only thought that
there was not a public large enough at present, and that
pushing Comm. was at present the only thing to be done.
We ought to increase the circulation by one thousand this
year and then it would be safe. There have been so many
advanced papers which have been born to die that it would
be a most serious advantage if we could make one Socialist
paper relatively immortal. I put this before the Edinburgh
friends and they quite agree. Of course I am very loth
to even appear to throw cold water on a scheme of propa-
ganda ; I only want no energy wasted.

We had a fine meeting last night to celebrate the Com-
mune— crowded. Kropotkin spoke in English, and very well.

So you will write and tell me what you think I had
better do, and I will consider your plans.

By the way, your paper about the grocer * is amusing ;
but if the portrait is recognisable it is libellous, and the C.
cannot bear a libel case for anything short of high treason.
How about the libellousness of it ?

1 ' Men who are not Socialists,' one of a series of articles which
began in Commonweal, May 7, 1887. I assured him that the
characters were fictitious and unidentifiable.

i9o WILLIAM MORRIS

December 2ist, 1887.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Many thanks for your letter. I
am very pleased to hear that you stick together well. . . .

Yes, I think that Champion is going all awry with his
opportunism ; but after all that is but natural, since it is
after all the line that the S.D.F. has taken all along ; only
they have mixed it up with queer Anarchist or rather sham
terrorist tactics, and frankly I think under the circumstances
he is right to drop that ; so that he is properly a consistent
S.D.F. man, taking the lines upon which we split off from
them. I cannot believe, however, that he is a self-seeker,
and so hope that he will one day see the error of his ways.

Last Sunday, as you will see, went off well. I must
say I expected a big shindy ; but was very glad that I was
disappointed, for it would have led to nothing. As it is, it
was a victory, for it was the most enormous concourse of
people I ever saw ; the number incalculable ; the crowd
sympathetic and quite orderly.

However, I shall be glad to let the Pall Mall Gazette
go on its ways now, and get to work harder on our special
business which all this demonstrating has rather hindered ;
rather in the united action of the body in London, however,
than in me. I mean ordinary meetings have been somewhat
neglected for these bigger jobs.

I send herewith a photo ; the artist has done his best in
it, I do believe. But what would you have ?

Let me know soon about what time you expect me to
come down, that I may make arrangements for a regular
tour. I may as well do as much as I can.

I think I am more likely to write an epic on your
(spiritual) birth than on that of your namesake of
Bannockburn ; but I apologise to all Scotchmen for my
irreverence that you twit me with.

By the way, I must say that Mrs. Besant has been
acting like a brick. She really is a good woman ; though,
as you know, in theory tarred with the opportunist stick.

Greetings to all.

APPENDIX 191

April i8th, 1888.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — You will see that a comrade
rather attacks your last production as frivolous ; it however
(not to make you vain) did something to sell the paper.1
At Victoria Park the Weal was going very slow, and then
one speaker began to quote from you and straightway Weal
began to flow. So don't mind Catterson Smith, but send
another.

I am just going to begin printing a new book, not
Socialistic except by inference : I will send you a copy when
it comes out, though there is nothing about Wallace Wight
in it.

P.S. — I say, 3 quires seems but a little to sell in the
commercial capital of Scotland.

May igth (1888).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — I quite agree with your views
about the future of the League and the due position of a
revolutionary party of principle as to its dealings with
Parliament.

As to affairs at the Conference, I am of course most
anxious to avoid a split, and so I believe is everyone, and I
hope that some modus vivendi will be found. As to myself,
you may be sure that I will not be pedantically stiff about
non-essentials. At the same time there are certain con-
victions which I cannot give up, and in action there are
certain courses which I cannot support. If you will
re-read the Editorial of the first number of the weekly
Commonweal, you will see my position stated exactly as I
should state it now, and which was the position taken by all
of us when the League was first formed. If the League
reverses its views on these points it stultifies our action in

1 The article in question was one on ' Why I don't like Clergy-
men.' A supposed humorous skit. The Comrade who objected
to it was Catterson Smith, the well-known translator of Burne-
Jones' drawings for the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer. He, Catter-
son Smith, and myself had an amusing discussion over the ' Ethics
of Humour ' afterwards. He was one of the most earnest and
delightful of the Kelmscott House ' Brotherhood.'

192 WILLIAM MORRIS

leaving the S.D.F., and becomes a different body to that
which I first joined. I should therefore be forced, to my
very great sorrow, to leave it, not for the purpose of sulking
in my tent, but in order to try some other form of propa-
ganda. I ought now to explain what would drive me
out of the League, and how far I could meet our friends
who are so anxious to have us take a part in Parliamentary
action :

A mere abstract resolution that we might have to send
members to Parliament at some time or other would not
drive me out. But I believe, with you, that, whatever
they may think, our Parliamentary friends would not be
able to stop there, and that a necessary consequence of the
passing of the Croydon resolution would have to be the
issue of a programme involving electioneering in the near
future, and the immediate putting forward of a programme
of palliative measures to be carried through Parliament,
some such programme, in short, as the * stepping stones ' of
the S.D.F., which I always disagreed with. Such a step
I could not support, for I could not preach in favour of
such measures (since I don't believe in their efficacy)
without lying and subterfuge, which are surely always
anti-social.

As to my conduct at the conference, my branch has
instructed me as delegate to try to get the furtherers of the
Parliamentary resolution to pledge themselves against this
palliative programme (in case the Croydon resolution is
carried). If they will do that I personally can still go on
with them ; if not, I cannot, much as I should wish to do
so. I almost fear that they cannot give this pledge ; but
at the same time I do not think they wish to drive matters
to extremities. The best plan therefore would be to with-
draw their resolution, and so avoid committing themselves
to a course of action which would risk breaking up the
League.

I hope you understand my position ; I recapitulate,
ist, under no circumstances will I give up active propaganda.

APPENDIX 193

2nd, I will make every effort to keep the League together.
3rd, we should treat Parliament as a representative of the
enemy. 4th, we might for some definite purpose be forced
to send members to Parliament as rebels. 5th, but under
no circumstances to help to carry on their Government of
the country. 6th, and therefore we ought not to put
forward palliative measures to be carried through Par-
liament, for that would be helping them to govern us.
yth, if the League declares for this latter step, it ceases to
be what I thought it was, and I must try to do what I can
outside it. 8th, but short of that I will work inside it.

You can show this letter to any of our friends, to each
and all of whom I send fraternal greetings.

July 2-jth (1888).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — You must not be too downcast
because of my London views of the movement ; but you
can easily see that from the time when the Parliamentary
section in the League made up their minds to press the
question to extremities the League was practically split.
Of course I shall do all I can to prevent a formal split, and
shall work my hardest whatever happens, either in the
League or out of it ; nor is there any probability of the
really active amongst the section of principle being dis-
couraged or separating. But you will see that the whole
of the work in London is now on our shoulders, and since
we were but shorthanded before, you may imagine that it
is hard work now. By the way, I am writing a paper on
the policy of abstention, which I should like to read in an
informal manner to Socialists only when I come your way.

As to Commonweal, here are the hard facts : with the
present circulation of say about 2800 we are losing ^4 per
week, supposing the number sold are all paid for. There
are monies owing to us of about £40, but about half that
must be written off as bad, owing to a bad habit that those
branches and individuals have got into of not sending up
the money for the sales they made and accumulating a

i94 WILLIAM MORRIS

debt, which now they cannot pay. Well, I already pay
£z a week to Commonweal (this £4 loss being in addition
to that) and absolutely cannot pay the extra £4 : nor ought
I to do so, as i\d. (three half-pence) a week from each
member of the League would tide us over, and if that cannot
be raised it is a sign that the League members don't care
about Commonweal.

Perhaps you will put these facts before our friends, who
I am sure are anxious to do their best in the matter. You
see when so very little more would save us, it does seem a pity
to drop the only satisfactory English-written Socialist print.

I shall be glad to hear from you as often as convenient.

August zgth (1888).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — I was very glad to have news
from you, and thank you for it. I wish I could give you
as good news from London as you give us from Glasgow,
but I consider we are in a poor way mostly. Our own
branch is very good still and keeps up wonderfully ; I
don't know that we increase in mere muster roll^ but we
do in members who take an interest in the work, and we
really are brisk. Elsewhere I can't say much for us, the
few who take an interest are pig-headed and quarrelsome.
The Sec. is (to speak plainly) a failure as such, though a
very good fellow. The East End agitation is a failure ;
the sale of Commonweal falls off, or rather has fallen off
all round ; which of course was inevitable after the business
of the Conference.

This sounds very gloomy j but, after all, I doubt if we
are worse than we were before ; a great deal of the excitement
of our East End Leaguers was the result of indoor ' agitation,
i.e. quarrelling amongst ourselves, and the Parliamentarians
having gone off the excitement has gone with them, and the
excited friends withal. Now all this does not discourage
me simply because I have discounted it ; I have watched
the men we are working with and know their weak points,
and knew that this must happen. One or two of them

APPENDIX 195

are vainglorious humbugs ; a good many are men who,
poor fellows, owing to their position cannot argue, and have
only impulsive feelings based on no sort of logic, emotional
or otherwise, and fall back when there is nothing exciting
going on ; since they have never had any real grasp of the
subject. Many also are so desperately poor that they
cannot work much for us ; some one or two like your
McLaren * have married a wife and therefore cannot come.'
Some again are hot-headed ; some, like poor Lane, in bad
health. With all this the worst of them are no worse
than other people ; mostly they are better, and some very
much better ; so that supposing we broke up the band, any
new band we got together would be composed of just the
same elements. Therefore the only thing is to be patient
and try to weld together those that are work-worthy.

Of course, the secession has given us a rough shake ;
several of the seceders did fair work, and they bought and
sold some Commonweal if not much. If any compromise
had been possible between us and them I should have favoured
it ; but it was not possible : the other side were determined
to use us if they could, quite reckless if in the attempt they
knocked the League to pieces. I ought to tell you, by the
way, that the Norwich branch, which at one time showed
signs of dissolution, has got on its legs again, and is really
both numerous and enthusiastic. So you may depend upon
it that we shall not drop all to pieces. We are quite deter-
mined here at Hammersmith to keep things going if no one
else will. We must never forget amongst other things
that there are always times of reflex in these movements,
and all politics are very dull at present owing largely to
the deadlock in the Irish question, and the feeling among
persons really progressive that we are being played upon
by politicians for their benefit ; the end of the Irish
question will, I feel sure, mark a step in revolution. Mean-
time we have to stick to it and be patient, as I have no
doubt you feel.

As to your own affairs : cannot you manufacture

196 WILLIAM MORRIS

speakers, deliberately inaugurate a speakers' class ? Common-
weal : I admit that it has been dull lately, and for the reasons
you stated. You see what we want here is, once more,
three or four able writers that we can depend upon ; we
are obliged to shove in all sorts of twaddle from time to time
to fill up — such is unpaid journalism, which, however,
is not so bad as paid ditto. I shall be very glad to have
Mavor's help. Kindly give me his present address. As for
your article, which I hurried you so for : mere printers' con-
sideration joined with the fact that it had not to do with passing
events kept it back. We are going to get together a meeting
of all our London speakers to see if we can shove the thing
on a bit here. I am more and more sure that what we want
at present is not mere numbers but a good band of steady
workers who will stick to it and who understand the sub-
ject— only we want a good many of them.

Once more I am much encouraged by your letter, and
am not in the least inclined to give in.

Good luck all round.

December i$th (1888).

DEAR GLASIER, — Thank you for the paper, which I
will read when it is in type. I by no means have Arnold's
book of Essays, not always finding them easy to read. I am
sorry I can't help you in the matter. I was very sorry to
hear the sad private news of your last letter.1

The Anarchist element in us seem determined to drive
things to extremity, and break us up if we do not declare
for Anarchy, which I for one will not do. On the other
hand the ' Moderates,' Mrs. Besant and Co., by their
foolish wooden attacks on us are taking away from the
reasonable party inside (if alas ! we must use the word * party')
all chance of holding things together. The only thing
to be done is to go on steadily trying to strengthen the local
bodies. Hammersmith remains satisfactory and is increasing
in solid strength, especially in speakers. But it is getting

1 The death of my eldest sister, whom he had met.

APPENDIX 197

into bad odour with some of our fiercer friends, I think
principally because it tacitly and instinctively tries to keep
up the first idea of the League, the making of genuine con-
vinced Socialists without reference to passing exigencies
of tactics, whether they take the form of attacking (and
running away from) the police in the streets or running
a candidate for the school board. I find that living in this
element is getting work rather too heavy for me. It is
lamentable that Socialists will make things hard for their
comrades. All this I ask you to keep strictly private and
confidential, i.e. not to talk to others about it, as I don't
want to discourage young members : but you are I think
old enough in the movement to have discounted a good deal
of it, and therefore will not be discouraged. All this after
all is but one corner of the movement, which really taken as
a whole and looked at from some way off is going on swim-
mingly. Leatham wrote to me (not on a card) in much the
same tone ; I am very glad he is so young and happy. I
shall be glad of your articles in any case. I have an idea that
the weekly might be resuscitated if we are careful, even if we
drop it now. I shall be glad to hear from you. Good luck
all round.

January 21 st, 1889.

DEAR GLASIER, — Your article seems all right, only
'tis so abominably cacographical that I find it very difficult
to read : also I think we had better have more of it before
we begin to print.1 Thanks for your explanation about
the testimonial, though of course / did not want any explana-
tion.2 Now — I am coming to Glasgow it seems to
give two lectures on Art, and I had better give a Sunday one

1 The article was never published. It was a long criticism
of Belfort Bax's Ethics of the Family, etc.

2 In consideration of the fact that I had been for a long time
out of employment, the Glasgow branch of which I was secretary
raised a ' testimonial ' for me which I accepted, but handed over
to the funds of the branch.

198 WILLIAM MORRIS

for you, and see as much of the branch as I can during my
stay : please arrange with Mavor. You understand that
I would not have gone merely for the Art gammon and
spinach ; but it was an opportunity of seeing you chaps
free of expense. I have much to say to you. . . As to
Commonweal I rather imagine that it will come to trying
the four page sheet for a while, but I honestly confess to
myself that I don't feel very sanguine about it. The truth
must be faced, the Communists of the League are in a very
weak position in the Socialist Party at present. We have
been much damaged both by parliamentarians and Anarchists,
and I don't think we are strong enough to run a paper ;
although, numbers apart, there is something to be said
for us.

You see John Burns has got some of his desires —
rather him than me in the position — ugh ! x

May i ^th, 1889.

DEAR GLASIER, — Have you seen Grant Allen's article
in the Contemporary ' Socialism and Individualism ' ? It
is of little importance in itself : but as the manifesto of
Herbert Spencer etc. against Herbert Spencer is of some
interest.

I suppose you have seen or read, or at least tried to read,
* Looking Backward.' I had to on Saturday, having
promised to lecture on it. Thank you, I wouldn't care to
live in such a cockney paradise as he imagines.

I hope to hear from you soon that you are getting on.

August i$th (1889).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Thanks for the letter, the business
transaction does not seem likely to call me to Glasgow just
yet : so I shall put off my visit if I can till I can be of most
use to the propaganda up there. As to the Scottish Land
and Labour League, I think one may assume that the

1 Elected as Liberal-Labour member on the London County
Council.

APPENDIX 199

Parliamentary Partyrhave had something to do with the
business, though it may not be so. But I don't think 'tis
worth much bothering oneself about ; because if they will
be parliamentary, names will neither keep them back nor
thrust them forward. If it were possible I for one part
should be only too glad to see the whole quarrel drop, on
the grounds of letting each branch do as it pleases as a branch.
Because really the organisation of the League is, and always
has been, so loose that if all the branches were merely
affiliated bodies doing what they pleased within the necessary
Socialist lines of attack on the monopoly of the means of
production, pushing the sale of the paper, and communi-
cating often with the Council (which would then be only
a body for such intercourse), we should not be worse off
than we have been all along, and to boot might escape these
weary squabbles.

So on the whole, the least said soonest mended on that
point.

As to the Commonweal I by no means feel overwhelmed
at the prospect of its again becoming a monthly. It sold
well under those conditions before, and had some good
articles in it ; and that might be so again. True it would
be a defeat ; but we must get used to such trifles as defeats,
and refuse to be discouraged by them. Indeed, I am an
old hand at that game, my life having been passed in being
defeated ; as surely every man's life must be who finds
himself forced into a position of being a little ahead of the
average in his aspirations.

There is perhaps somewhat of a slack in the direct
propaganda at present ; but the big world is going on at
a great rate to my mind towards the change, and I am sure
both that steady preachment of even a dozen men (as in
the Christian Legend) will make steady progress for the
cause, and also that those who have really learned Socialism
can never any more be persuaded that water runs uphill
of itself. And you and a few men cannot be prevented
from preaching by anything external to themselves. How-

200 WILLIAM MORRIS

ever, I am getting a little more hopeful of keeping the
League together on something like its present terms, and
we ought to try to do all we can, because a new start would
be pleasant enough at first ; but who shall ensure us against
getting into the selfsame difficulties again, as we began,
as we certainly should, to increase in numbers ?

Tuesday Morning.

We held our London members' meeting last night as
advertised in C. and though the attendance was not good,
I think they showed signs of renewed life ; we are going
to open two new stations, hold concert for benefit of paper
(by the way, couldn't you do something in this line), send
out a flying missionary column on Saturdays beginning next
Saturday. You see the London workmen are blas6 of
politics, and have none of the solidarity which the workmen
of big industries have. On the other hand, London is a
big place, and there are all sorts of people in it, and we ought
to be able to get some of the good 'uns.

October yd (1889).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — I ask your pardon for not writ-
ing to you before. The fact is I don't like writing letters.
I could almost wish sometimes that the art of writing had
not been invented — at any rate, I wish the postmen would
strike, on all grounds. Now, as to business. Yes, I will
come if you will get me an audience ; but I expect that you
will have to put up with a rough lecture enough as I have
not time for a literary production. Crane, I have no doubt,
would do what he could ; so would Walker, but he is no
speaker. C. Sanderson might be able to help : but I doubt
if he would speak in the open air. You had better arrange
with Glasse about my day in Glasgow, always remembering
that I shall want to go South to the pock-pudding as soon
as I can ; for my business needs me sorely.

With best wishes, even for the wicked of your branch,
let alone the good like yourself.

APPENDIX 201

March igth (1890).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — I have been a long time answering
your letter : need I make any excuses ? Thank you for
your kind estimate of my last work ; I am truly glad that
it pleases you. It is not popular, but I think some people
read it and like it. As to the movement, between you and
me the League don't get on — except like a cow's tail,
downwards. Up here there is now a great deal of quarrelling
(in which I take no part), the basis of which is that some of
them want the paper made * more revolutionary,' i.e. they
want to write the articles themselves (which they can't do),
and to do a little blood and thunder without any meaning,
which might get me into trouble but couldn't hurt them.
In all this there is no great harm (and no malice) if we were
flourishing ; but we are not. I am now paying for the
League (including paper) at the rate of £500 a year, and
I cannot stand it ; at Whitsuntide I must withdraw half
of that, whatever may happen : which will probably be the
end of Commonweal, followed by the practical end of the
League. A little while ago this would have seemed very
terrible, but it does not trouble me much now. Socialism
is spreading, I suppose on the only lines on which it could
spread, and the League is moribund simply because we are
outside those lines, as I for one must always be. But I shall
be able to do just as much work in the movement when the
League is gone as I do now. The main cause of the failure
(which was obvious at least two years ago) is that you cannot
keep a body together without giving it something to do in
the present, and now, since people will willingly listen to
Socialist doctrine, our rank and file have nothing to do.
But of course you know more about all this than I can
tell you. Meantime, it is a matter of course that I shall
do what I can to put off the evil day for C'weal, and I
am sure you will help. Try to make arrangements to
come up at Whitsuntide ; I will find you quarters.
This letter is hurried and rough ; so please keep it to
yourself.

202 WILLIAM MORRIS

April 6th (1890).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Thanks for your letters ; you
know I am a bad correspondent.

I heard of last year at Dundee, and they said then

he was damaging them much. I saw the carl at Edinburgh
more than once ; a good speaker (sometimes drunk, however —
once notably so at one of my meetings), a plausible dog, an
extractor of money in small sums by dint of diplomacy —
in short, a statesman lacking the larger opportunities.

Commonweal appears to have discovered the widow's
cruse ; for it goes on buying and selling, and living on
the loss quite triumphantly. The (genuine) sale is a little
going up, and I think we shall be able to keep it going
through the year. Kitz is by no means a bad sec. in that
respect.

Otherwise I can't say that I call the League prospects
good. Outside the Hammersmith branch the active (?)
members in London mostly consider themselves Anarchists,
but don't know anything about Socialism and go about ranting
revolution in the streets, which is about as likely to happen
in our time as the conversion of Englishmen from stupidity
to quickwittedness. A great deal of our trouble comes from

Messrs. D and M , who have been rather clever at

pulling us to pieces, but could do nothing towards building
up even their own humbugging self-seeking party.

Now I must do notes for Gweal. I don't like the job,
as I have a new book on hand which amuses me vastly.

October ^lh (1890).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — As I was away from Hammer-
smith when your letter came, I did not see the ' Laird of
Logan ' till yesterday, for they did not send it on. Thank
you very much for thinking of me and sending it. It has
a queer old-fashioned look about it which would seem to
make it amusing, but I have only had time to look at it.

I have been down at Kelmscott (where Ellen vanished,
you know) off and on for some weeks now, but London has

APPENDIX 203

begun to collar me, and next week I shall be there j and shall
try to be a little more virtuous about propaganda work.
In truth I have not been very well (am all right again now)
and did really need a rest. Not that it was not full of work
though.

I shall now presently begin to touch up * N. from N.'
[( News from Nowhere 'J for its book form, and will publish
for a shilling. It has amused me very much writing it ;
but, you may depend upon it, it won't sell. This, of course,
is my own fault — or my own misfortune.

As to League affairs : I have really been a good bit
out of them. I don't think there is much life in it anywhere
except at our branch, which so far is really satisfactory.
Sometimes feel rather sick of things in general. The
humbug which floats to the top in all branches of intelligence
is such a damned greasy pot-scum.

But I must not get to mere railing. Good luck.

December tfh (1890).
[NOTE. — This is private. I mean the very words are.]

DEAR GLASIER, — I have seen your letter to Walker
anent the League and the H. Society, and am thinking that
perhaps you are thinking I owe you an apology or at least
an explanation, so here it is ; I hope not a long one. In
the first place I did not write to you before because I wanted
to avoid all appearance of plotting or colloguing. So much
for my apparent neglect of you. As to the event itself :
there is really little to say beyond the circular (sent only to
the branches and the Council). The whole thing lies in
this, that, as of course you noticed in the last conference,
there were two parties in the League, the old Communist
one with which it began, and the Anarchist. Now suppos-
ing these two parties remaining in the League, each must
necessarily try to use the other for purposes which it did
not approve of. Hence constant quarrel ; one party alwavs
attacking the other instead of the common enemy. I have

204 WILLIAM MORRIS

gone through this, as you will know, before, and I am
determined never to stand it again. As soon as there are
two parties in any body I am in — then out I go. Yet you
should know that the H. Branch would have gone out six
months ago if it had not been for respect of my sentiments ;
they have been very discontented for a long while. As
to detail : please understand the H.B., though as numerous
as all the rest of the League I think, had no power on the
Council ; if we had stayed in and fought the matter we
should have been outvoted every time by at least 8 to 3,
so what was the use of our being there ? Something I
might have done in keeping Commonweal rational, but only
by threatening withdrawal of supplies : such a * censorship
of the piper ' would be too odious for me to endure. And
again what would have been the use since I was in any case
going to withdraw my subsidy at the end of the year, as I
now have done, paying all up to the end ? Nay, supposing
I had gone on with that subsidy, it would not have saved the
paper, which was making a fresh deficit every week. I must
have doubled it, as I did the early part of the year — up to the
Conference in fact.

Well, now, what were we to do ? Go once a week to
a private hell to squabble causelessly with men that after all
we like ? Or withdraw from the Council ? That would
have been only a covert and less honest way of leaving the
League, and would have hampered both them and us. Call
a general conference ? To what end ? What more could
we discover at it than that we didn't agree ? Besides, these
conferences are really bogus affairs.

In short, my dear boy, whenever you want to get rid
of me you need never put on your boots. I never wait to
be kicked downstairs. Don't misunderstand the affair : we
have borne with it all a long time ; and at last have gone
somewhat suddenly. For my part I foresaw all this when
we allowed the Bloomsbury branch to be expelled. They

deserved it, for it was that pig of a D who began it all ;

but they being out, it was certain that the Anarchists would

APPENDIX 205

get the upper hand. I rather wonder at your being surprised.
My article, following on Nicol's folly, should have told you
what was up. I meant it as a * Farewell.' It was, and was
meant to be, directly opposed to anything the Anarchist
side would want to say or do. If I had remained in the
League after that I must have attacked their position per-
sistently. And why should I ? I shouldn't have converted
them.

You understand, I don't want to influence your action
up there : none of us do. Your position is different from
ours ; because you are so far away that you cannot take any
part in the management ; whereas, in my judgment, we must
as long as we profess to belong.

We have no wish to proselytise amongst the League
branches. Anyone can join us who pleases, League or no
League ; but we don't ask them. And I have no doubt
that we shall be just as good friends with you whatever
you do.

Personally, I must tell you that I feel twice the man
since I have spoken out. I dread a quarrel above all things,
and I have had this one on my mind for a year or more.
But I am glad it is over at last ; for in good truth I would
almost as soon join a White Rose Society as an Anarchist
one ; such nonsense as I deem the latter.

You will have our manifesto soon ; and I know you
will agree with it, as it will disclaim both Parliamentarianism
and Anarchism.

To change the subject : I am going to send you my
new translation-book to-morrow. * News from Nowhere '
is already printed in America, and I am going to print it
here for a shilling : the Yank, I fancy, is a dollar.

Well, goodbye, and don't be downcast, because we have
been driven to admit plain facts. It has been the curse of
our movement that we would lie to ourselves about our
progress and victories and the like. Aha ! What do you
think of the awakened conscience of Mrs. Grundy re Mr.
Parnell ? Ain't it delicious ? — as Miss Mowcher says.

206 WILLIAM MORRIS

December i6th (1890).

MY DEAR GLASIER, — Thanks for your letter ; I
might say so much, that at present I will say little : In the
first place I agree with you almost wholly, including Parnell.
In the second, I am not going to retire. In the third, we
mustn't trouble ourselves about the babble of the press.
In the fourth, we Hammersmith' ers will, I have no doubt,
be eager to join in any arrangement which would bring
us together. Lastly, as to the paper, I don't like papers ;
and we have after a very long experiment found out that
a sectional paper cannot be run. Two things we might do
or might be done. First, we might set up a penny monthly
merely as a means of communication. Second, a general
Socialist paper might be started to include all sections. As
to the first, I would do nothing in it as long as a monthly
Commonweal exists ; I would rather support that if I could.
As to the second, it looks promising ; but you, of course,
know the difficulties. Who is to be editor ? How will it
work under the jealousies of the different sections ? Are
the Anarchists to be in it ? etc., etc. Pamphlets are good :
won't you write us one ? For the rest, speaking and lectur-
ing as much as sickened human nature can bear are the only
things as far as I can see.

I am in hopes that I may manage to come your way in
the Spring and then we can talk these matters more at length,
and I could tell you things in speaking which in writing
slip out of the head. I want to see Glasse, and the Aber-
deen'ers also ; only, of course, I shall avoid any influencing
the League branches.

March gth, 1892.

MY DEAR GLASIER, — I have been trying to find time
to write a long letter to you ; but, seeing that I have not
found the time for that, I had better write a short one at
once.

Thanks very much for your last letter. As to the
subjects of it I had perhaps better get over the disagreeable

APPENDIX 207

part of them, and say that it does not seem as if I shall be
able to come to you this spring, though I should very much
like to do so. If I possibly can come I will turn the matter
over. Isn't autumn a possible time ?

For the rest, I quite agree with your views as to the
present position, and so I am sure do all here. I sometimes
have a vision of a real Socialist Party at once united and
free. Is it possible ? Here in London it might be done,
I think, but the S.D.F. stands in the way. Although the
individual members are good fellows enough as far as I have
met them, the society has got a sort of pedantic tone of
arrogance and lack of generosity, which is disgusting and
does disgust both Socialists and Non-Soc. Their last feat
in trying to spoil the Chelsea election for the L.C.C.,
although they had no programme better than theirs, was a
wretched piece of tactics ; and now the Anti-Soc., both
Whigs and Tories, go about saying that the Chelsea Socialists
are only 170. Whereas that means nothing more than the
branch of the S.D.F.

What do you think of the said L.C.C. election ? I am
pleased on the whole. It is certainly the result of the
Socialist movement, and is a Labour victory, as the afiair
was worked by the Socialist and Labour people. Of course
I don't think that much will come of it directly ; but I do
think it shows a great advance. Item, the L.C.C. so far
has to my experience shown itself an amazing improvement
on the old red-tape public bodies : the antiscrape 1 has on
three separate occasions had deputations to them and has
been received in a human point of view ; arguments listened
to and weighed, and opinion changed in consequence.
This for a public body is certainly wonderful. Of course,
I don't think much of gas and water Socialism, or indeed of
any mere mechanical accessories to Socialism ; but I can see
that the spirit of the thing is bettering, and in spite of all
disappointments I am very hopeful.

1 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

2o8 WILLIAM MORRIS

I send by this post a copy of the last song book : you
will find some of the old well-worn fellows amongst them.

Well, I hope we shall meet somehow. Walker (by the
way) is going to Scotland at the end of this week. He will
tell you all the news.

Consider about the autumn and tell me. Meantime,
Good Luck.

Printed by SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE <£• Co. LTD.
Colchester, London &• Eton, England

Glasier, John Bruce

5033 William Morris and the early
G5 days

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

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